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THE LARGER ASPECTS 
OF SOCIALISM 



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THE LARGER ASPECTS 
OF SOCIALISM 



BY 

WILLIAM ENGLISH WALLING 

AUTHOR OF "SOCIALISM AS IT IS" 



THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 
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PREFACE 

Socialism can be approached equally well from 
two opposite directions. It may be treated either as a 
social movement that aims to build up a new civiliza- 
tion, or as a new civilization that is gradually being 
embodied in a social movement. In my ''Socialism As 
It Is" I followed the first method and discussed the 
economic and political features of Socialism exclusively; 
in the present volume I shall proceed in the reverse direc- 
tion and deal exclusively with its larger aspects, its intel- 
lectual and spiritual side. 

As the two books were conceived and written together, 
they are parts of a single whole; but they are built on 
entirely independent foundations. In dealing with the 
economic and political movement I followed the inductive 
method; taking the activities of the movement itself 
as my point of departure, I concluded with its generaliza- 
tions. In discussing the cultural movement I have fol- 
lowed the deductive method. Taking as my point of 
departure the philosophy of modern science, which I 
show to be wholly Socialistic in its bearings, and wholly 
dependent upon Socialism for its practical applications, 
I have first shown what results are reached by approach- 
ing each of the subjects I have discussed from this new 
standpoint, and I have then pointed out how the Socialist 
movement is, as a matter of fact, moving along the same 
line. This philosophy I have called pragmatism, because 
I believe pragmatism is Socialism, if taken in what seems 

iii 



IV PREFACE 

to me to be its most able and consistent interpretation, 
that of Professor John Dewey. 

From the point of view of its basic assumptions, then, 
I might have called the present volume "The Philosophy 
of Socialism" ; from the point of view of its conclu- 
sions it might be entitled "The Sociology of Socialism." 
I conceive of all the intermediate subjects covered as 
being related equally to these two poles of my problem. 
But as many readers have not been in the habit of con- 
sidering all these subjects in connection either with phil- 
osophy or with sociology, either one of the above titles 
or even a combination of the two would have appeared 
to such readers as too narrow. 

In view of the variety of the matters discussed, it is 
scarcely necessary to call the reader's attention to the 
fact that the work consists of Socialist criticism and 
not of my individual views. I have used every effort to 
find a pragmatic or Socialist writer at every point, and 
offer my individual opinions only where such writers are 
either lacking or do not exist to my knowledge. Such 
instances are, however, relatively few, and I hope to 
convince my readers that the general standpoint I have 
presented is that of the philosophy of modern science and 
of the Socialist movement. 

Cedarhnrst, Long Island, March 15, 1913. 



INTRODUCTION 

SOCIALISM A NEW CIVILIZATION 

"Socialism is not only a doctrine, a system, a method. It is all 
this and more; it is a civilization." 

— Canalejas, late Premier of Spain. 

Wilhelm Liebknecht held that Socialism includes 
"all the life, all the feelings and thoughts of man"; the 
eminent Austrian publicist, Anton Menger, says that 
the Socialist movement does not consist merely in a 
propagation of an economic doctrine, but that "the 
whole domain of mental life must be filled with the 
Socialist spirit : philosophy, law, morals, art and liter- 
ature" j 1 while in the opinion of Jaures "all the great 
human forces, labor, thought, science, art, even religion 
and humanity's conquest of the universe, await on So- 
cialism for regeneration and further development." 2 

"Socialism," writes H. G. Wells, "is a great initiation 
of construction, organization, science and education," 
which contains an "immense creative element." In the 
final chapter of his "New Worlds for Old," Wells 
points out that the advance of Socialism must take three 
forms. The first of these in point of time is the propa- 
ganda, but the first in importance is the development of 
Socialism itself: 

"First logically, and most important, is the primary 
intellectual process, the elaboration, criticism, discussion, 
enrichment and enlargement of the project of Socialism. 



VI INTRODUCTION 

This includes all sorts of sociological and economic re- 
search, the critical literature of Socialism, and every pos- 
sible way — the drama, poetry, painting, music — of ex- 
pressing and refining its spirits, its attitude and concep- 
tions. It includes, too, all sorts of experiments in living 
and association. In its widest sense it includes all science, 
literature and invention." 3 

Third in point of time, and as yet least important, 
comes that phase of Socialism which the general public, 
unfortunately, often supposes/ to be the whole, namely 
the political side, "the actual changing of practical 
things in the direction of the coming Socialized State, 
the actual Socialization." Wells is at great pains to 
make his readers seize the fact that this is the least 
pressing part of the Socialist activities: "Socialism is 
a moral and intellectual process, let me in conclusion 
reiterate that. Only secondarily and incidentally does 
it sway the world of politics." 

Another Englishman, the economist and publicist John 
A. Hobson, though a collectivist and opposed to So- 
cialism, has stated in a few words just what those con- 
ditions are that force all the more far-sighted and repre- 
sentative Socialists to the broader conception of the 
task that lies before them: 

"The history, the political economy, the literature and 
the biology taught in schools and colleges under the con- 
trol of persons whose training and character are molded 
by 'class' influences will inevitably be anti-democratic. 
They will continue to construct and propagate, as they 
have always done, a politics and an economics designed 
to ward off assaults upon the vested interests of which 
they are the intellectual mercenaries. Since the real 
power of the people rests not in the possession of votes, 
but in the capacity to use them, the real struggle for de- 
mocracy centers around the struggle for free education, 



INTRODUCTION Vll 

free alike from the financial, political, and moral control 
of the classes. Educational democracy is an essential con- 
dition of political and industrial democracy." 

The American who has come nearest, perhaps, to an 
adequate expression of the larger Socialism is Walt 
Whitman. For Whitman realized that his ideals were 
not to be reached by a struggle against nature alone, or 
against social inertia and disorganization, ignorance and 
poverty, but declared war also against social forces and 
classes hostile to democratic progress. He says, almost 
in so many words, that political democracy can become 
social democracy and build up a new society only through 
an actual conflict of the new civilization with the old: 

"For feudalism, caste, the ecclesiastic traditions, 
though palpably retreating from political institutions,- 
still hold essentially, by their spirit, even in this country, 
entire possession of the more important fields, indeed the 
very sub-soil, of education, and of social standards and 
literature. 

"I say that democracy can never prove itself beyond 
cavil until it founds and luxuriantly grows its own forms 
of art, poems, schools, theology, displacing all that exists, 
or that has been produced anywhere in the past, under 
opposite influences." (Italics mine.) 4 

Fundamentally Socialism means, not merely a political 
and economic revolution, nor even a revolution in his- 
tory, science, literature and art, but both of these to- 
gether. The conflict is between two classes and the 
whole of the two civilizations they represent. 

The present-day culture, like that of every period of 
the past, is the culture of the ruling class. Represent- 
ing the interests and views of a class which is still 
maintained in power largely by coercive means, it is 
necessarily based in large part on the military concep- 



Vlll INTRODUCTION 

tion of command and obedience, in other words on the 
idea of authority. Then it is a leisure class culture, for 
the ruling classes have always enough surplus power to 
support a certain amount of inert parasitism in their 
midst as well as the active parasitism of the beast-of- 
prey variety. This aspect of our culture is very near to 
what is commonly called aristocracy, when the word is 
used in the social rather than in the political sense. And 
finally, our culture has been competitive, not only in com- 
merce, but throughout. Indeed it has been competitive 
almost as long and continuously as it has been a ruling 
class or a leisure class culture ; for the periods since the 
beginning of written history when the merchants and 
capitalists were not a dominating factor in society have 
been relatively few. And, finally, another system of class 
rule, the regime of status and hereditary caste of which 
Spencer speaks, however contradictory it may seem to 
the competitive system, has often existed alongside of it 
or in combination with it. Competition for property 
and power among the members of the governing classes, 
under the limitations the welfare of these classes sug- 
gests, has co-existed with status and caste since the days 
when Hammurabi ruled Babylon some 2,100 years B. C. 
Every element of culture is shaped by the social system 
or civilization of which it is a part; this applies alike to 
philosophy, to science, to history, to sociology, to psy- 
chology, to morality, to religion, to literature, and to 
art. The Socialist who appeals to a cultured audience 
in the name of the new civilization which is struggling 
against the old is forced in some measure to touch upon 
all these subjects. But it is only figurative to say that 
two civilizations, two social systems, or two cultural 
systems are struggling against one another. As a mat- 
ter of fact it is two bodies of men that are in conflict. 
And the fact that it is a class struggle (to employ a 



INTRODUCTION IX 

much abused phrase) means that the whole personality 
of the members of each class is involved and that every 
feature of present-day life is affected. Whatever the 
ruling classes as a whole stand for may rightly be called 
a part of present civilization, and whatever a sufficient 
majority of representative Socialists stand for, whether 
in philosophy, science, or literature, is an indication of 
what the Socialist civlization will probably be. 

It is in vain that, for the purpose of immediate polit- 
ical gains, Socialist parties sometimes pass "self-denying 
ordinances," like the Parliament of the British Com- 
monwealth under Cromwell, pledging themselves to ab- 
stain from exerting any special influence on these 
larger aspects of life or from taking into considera- 
tion their effect on practical political and economic 
activities. Such an effort is not only vain but mis- 
taken, as the movement can lose nothing in the long run 
by building on the broadest possible foundations. Marx 
and the other most representative Socialists, therefore, 
never described Socialism as a purely political and 
economic doctrine and never failed to point out its larger 
relations. 

The principle that asserts the absolute interdependence 
of the cultural and the economic and political sides of 
civilization and human progress is the most basic of the 
whole Socialist philosophy and policy. It is the essence 
of what is called "the materialist interpretation of his- 
tory." Unfortunately, in the discussion of this principle 
attention has been centered almost entirely on the ad- 
jective "materialist" and it has been repeatedly explained 
by eminent Socialists that this word is not used in the 
ordinary sense. What is more important is to under- 
stand that the word "history" refers not to the past so 
much as to present-day society and civilization. 

I have pointed out in a previous volume that the only 



X INTRODUCTION 

definition of Socialism is the Socialist movement. But 
when we come to deal with the larger aspects of Social- 
ism this definition is no longer sufficient. Organized 
Socialism often attempts to confine itself to political and 
economic activities; when we get beyond this sphere we 
no longer have the movement as a whole to guide us, 
and we come against the difficulty that the Socialist Con- 
gresses have decided that Socialism can have no official 
position on questions outside the political and economic 
struggle. When, however, the overwhelming majority 
of Socialists do have ascertainable and common opinions 
on some of these broader issues, and these opinions are 
clearly outlined in the official party press and litera- 
ture, we can still direct ourselves by the movement — 
though we can no longer say that it has fought out 
such opinions or that it has tested them in practical 
life or that it is ready to stake its existence upon them, 
as we can of its political and economic principles. 

This does not necessarily mean that the movement 
considers these larger aspects of Socialism less funda- 
mental, but that it regards it as less necessary to con- 
centrate immediate attention on them. Indeed Socialist 
writers and thinkers are expected by the movement to 
confront and handle every issue and to discuss every 
subject from the Socialist standpoint, though each So- 
cialist writer is forced, in the lack of any official formu- 
lation on these broader questions, to restate the Social- 
ist philosophy as he sees it. And he always begins, nat- 
urally, with those Socialist principles that are most ac- 
cepted, that is its economic and political philosophy, 
which is the method I have pursued. What, then, is this 
economic and political philosophy — very briefly, since 
this is not the main subject of the present volume? 

In my "Socialism As It Is," I dealt with Socialism 
purely as an economic and political movement. I 



INTRODUCTION XI 

showed that this movement was not a struggle for any- 
fixed program of reforms but a struggle for the control 
of industry and government by the non-privileged. As 
an effort to increase the relative power of the masses at 
the expense of the ruling classes until the latter are 
abolished, this movement can have a fixed program only 
for the time after class rule will have been overthrown. 

It is customary for Socialist writers, in spite of these 
admitted facts, to define the Socialist movement as being 
mainly a class-struggle of working people against cap- 
italists and then to proceed to qualify this definition. 
This procedure is not in accord with the present meth- 
ods of science, which demand, instead of a rigid defini- 
tion with an unlimited number of qualifications, a defini- 
tion broad and loose enough so that it does not need 
to be qualified. From this standpoint perhaps the near- 
est we can come to a definition is to say that Socialism 
is a movement of the non-privileged to overthrow the 
rule of the privileged in industry and government. It is 
true that this definition draws no sharp line between the 
classes in conflict, but no sharp line exists. It may 
be admitted even that it is no real definition at all. But 
some such tentative statement or working hypothesis, 
then, is a better way to approach the subject, more ac- 
curate and less misleading than any dogmatic defini- 
tion could be. In other words, Socialism is a struggle of 
those who have less, against those who have more, than 
equal opportunity would afford. . 

Many of the non-privileged who are not working- 
men are by no means nearer to privilege than the work- 
ingmen are. Privilege is a matter of income, hours, 
leisure, place of living, associations and opportunity, 
rather than of mere occupation. The phrase, "class- 
struggle," is a survival from the middle ages. Class di- 
vision by occupation was a medieval condition, when the 



Xll INTRODUCTION 

son followed in the father's footsteps ; now the worker in 
each class can put his children in a thousand occupa- 
tions — the only limitation is the social level on which 
he lives. Before the period of large scale industry, cor- 
porations, and trusts, the lower level was chiefly filled 
with employees of private industry; later, numerous offi- 
cial and professional elements were gradually added to 
it; and now, as the government takes on more and more 
industrial functions, government employees promise 
within a few years to become the most numerous of all. 
To classify an individual economically, especially in 
modern society, we must then consider not only his occu- 
pation, as some Marxists seem to imply, but we must at- 
tach an equal weight to his income level. The question 
is not only how an individual makes his living, but how 
much of a living he makes. 

The conflict of Socialism with present society is not in 
reality a class-struggle. It is not a struggle between two 
social classes or even two groups of social classes. It is 
a class struggle only on one side. The ruling class or 
ruling classes are more or less unified; Socialism rep- 
resents the opposition of all the rest of the population, 
but not of a class. It is not a struggle between classes; 
it is a struggle of the ruling class against the rest of 
the human race. 

To describe this great conflict of civilizations as a 
struggle between classes is to place the most useful of 
phrases in the hands of the enemy. Anti-Socialists can 
and do say: On both sides is a class, each is selfish, 
each wishes to rule, and in either case one class or the 
other will be conquered. Then the only way to end the 
struggle is for both the classes to stop struggling and 
cultivate mutual understanding. The easiest way to put 
an end to this talk is to drop the old misleading phrase, 
and to reply: There is only one class, the class that 



INTRODUCTION Xlll 

wants to rule humanity and must be conquered by hu- 
manity, and the only way to do this is to fight relent- 
lessly to deprive that class, and each and every member 
of that class, of their privileges and power. Both the 
phrases, "class struggle" and "class-consciousness," 
may legitimately be used, then, to mean exactly the op- 
posite of what the majority of Socialists intend them 
to mean. When a Socialist says that the exploited should 
be "class-conscious" he means, strange to say, that 
there must be no exploited class. It is answered most 
plausibly, that to be class-conscious can only mean to 
want to advance the interests of one class as a class. On 
the contrary, true Socialists must be ready, within rea- 
sonable limits, to give up an opportunity of advancing 
either themselves or their class every time they believe 
such a sacrifice brings nearer the abolition of their class 
and of all other classes. 

A "class-conscious" worker engaged in a u class strug- 
gle" to advance the- interests of his class, without any 
further aim, is exactly the opposite to a Socialist; he is 
a reactionary doing all in his power to restore the regime 
of status or class. History is full of the struggles of 
one class to conquer another class. The present conflict, 
being the first effort of the whole population outside of 
the ruling class not only to conquer that class but to put 
an end to all classes, is not a class struggle like its prede- 
cessors, but an anti-class struggle. But the phrase has 
served a useful purpose in the past, and we must remem- 
ber what it has come to mean to those who use it most, 
as well as what it actually says. Only it must always 
be remembered also that it is used by Socialists in a 
special and technical sense and does not mean exactly 
what it says. 

What part then of the theoretical formulations of 
the Socialism of the past remains wholly unobjection- 



XIV INTRODUCTION 

able from the modern pragmatic standpoint? Only this, 
that all truth must come from social activity, that not 
only sociology but all the culture and civilization of the 
future must come from the actual struggles of that so- 
cial movement which represents the future as against 
the past, the movement which is preparing the new so- 
ciety. The magnitude of this truth is so great that even 
the leading Socialist writers have barely touched upon it 
from time to time, only to step down again to the semi- 
dogmatic and partial truths of "the materialist concep- 
tion of history" and "the class-struggle." The larger 
and deeper truth is so generally accepted, so fundamental 
and so pervasive within the Socialist movement that it 
is taken as a matter of course, has become sub-conscious 
and is rarely discussed or formulated. 

All the leading Socialist writers have seen this truth 
and stated it; for example, take a recent article by the 
ultra-revolutionary Marxist Anton Pannekoek: 

"Scientific Socialism, as established by Marx and En- 
gels, combined into a harmonious unity two things, 
which from the bourgeois point of view, appeared to be 
irreconcilable opposites : on the one hand dispassionate 
objectivity, science indifferent to ideals, and on the other 
hand the passionately sought subjective ideal of a better 
society. Those who do not take the point of view of 
scientific Socialism believe that an ideal, that is to say, 
something which we desire, can never be a subject matter 
of science, and that, conversely, passionate desire must 
be a hindrance to objective truth. To the alleged ob- 
jective science of society they give the name of sociol- 
ogy; and the sterility, the lack of results which is every- 
where in evidence in the countless books of these 'sociol- 
ogists,' furnishes the best refutation of their contention 
that social truth is born of dry book-learning, rather than 
of participation in the social struggles." 5 



INTRODUCTION XV 

"Social truth is born in social struggles." What a 
pity that this momentous revolutionary concept should 
lie buried among so many lesser and more partial truths ! 
This truth and this alone is the essence of all Socialism 
from Marx to modern pragmatism. And this truth in 
itself is a sufficient basis for a complete revolution in 
every phase of our present class culture. 

All other Socialist teachings serve to tie the movement 
down almost as much as they serve it. Only the truth, 
that this is the only movement that challenges the old 
society to mortal combat, and that it is recognized by 
all in authority as being the one movement they have 
to fear, opens out ever new horizons and possibilities. 
Only the struggle of the new society against the old 
guides us either as to our ultimate aims or our tactics. 
Where we meet the most resistance, there we know our 
efforts promise to bring the greatest fruits. 

Up to this point I have spoken only of what the larger 
Socialism is; far more important is the inquiry as to 
what it is becoming, what it is going to be. If Socialism 
is the philosophy and policy of the Socialist movement 
it must evidently be in a state of constant evolution, for 
it would be difficult for the most belated Socialist to 
deny that fundamental changes are occurring in the 
movement. Not only is it growing in mere size, but it 
is evolving in the fullest sense of the word; that is, like 
every living thing, it is taking on characters that could 
not have been predicted even by omniscience, to say noth- 
ing of the merely human powers of foresight of its early 
formulators. Indeed the evolution of the Socialist 
movement and of the policies and philosophy that grow 
out of it is becoming so rapid to-day that it amounts 
practically to a revolution. The revolution in policy in- 
volved in the turning about of the movement to face 
"State Socialism" instead of private capitalism, I have 



XVI INTRODUCTION 

dealt with in a previous volume. The change that is 
taking place in the philosophy and the other larger as- 
pects of the movement, which is no less revolutionary, 
is the subject of the present work. 

As Socialism first appeared at a time when even the 
most radical ideas were formulated in a dogmatic man- 
ner, it could be no exception to the rule, however ad- 
vanced its early thinkers may have been. As a conse- 
quence, all their successors who took their point of 
departure, not from the living and growing reality, 
namely the movement itself, but from those older the- 
ories were also more or less dogmatic, whether their 
dogmatism consisted in trying to reverse the spirit of 
Marx's teachings, or in attempting the impossible task of 
making them more revolutionary. Bernstein and the 
Revisionists in Germany, Jaures and the Reformists in 
France, the Fabian Society and the Independent Labor 
Party in Great Britain, attempted to tone Marxism down 
by a counter dogmatism which they usually regarded as 
"criticism" either of Marx's data, or of his political 
economy. The Syndicalists in France and Italy, while 
declaring themselves Marxists (as did the French and 
Germans just mentioned, though not the English), en- 
deavored to make their Marxism more revolutionary, 
either by incorporating some points of the Anarchist 
philosophers or through attempting to apply some new 
metaphysics, as that of Bergson. 

The revisionists of Marxism, whether right revision- 
ists or left revisionists (to employ the Continental 
terms), that is whether their purpose was to make the 
movement less revolutionary or more revolutionary, 
based their reasoning not upon the movement itself but 
mainly on its early theories. What is actually happen- 
ing, then, as a result of all these tendencies, or rather 
in spite of them, is that the older theory is neither being 



INTRODUCTION XV11 

merely revised nor wholly repudiated but that it is 
being completely revolutionized. Without endeavoring 
to settle any of the older questions put by the revision- 
ists, revolutionary Socialists are beginning to formulate 
their opposition to present society in the terms of a 
philosophy and science which have grown up altogether 
since the time of Marx and Darwin (the patron saint 
of the English Fabians). 

The tendency of the newer Socialist thought is not 
to struggle against the old, nor to turn the movement 
to the right or to the left, but to enable it to go more 
rapidly ahead — in the same revolutionary direction in 
which it originally started and, on the whole, has been 
traveling ever since. And in order to go more rapidly 
ahead the great need is not to patch up theories of 1850 
for the purpose, but to employ such new principles and 
methods as most adequately express the present day 
movement and the present period generally. The older 
theories, as I have said, may be taken not only as having 
been satisfactory for the time in which they were formu- 
lated, but as still having, beyond doubt, a very consid- 
erable value to-day. But it is not necessary, in order to 
save what is of value, to try to adapt these older theories 
to present need, for whatever was vital and of last- 
ing worth has long ago been embodied in the movement 
itself, at least wherever it has reached an advanced state, 
as for example in Germany. By basing our theory 
henceforth on the movement (where it is mature), in- 
stead of following the opposite method of trying to 
base the movement on a theory, we not only have the 
best possible form of Marxism and a policy in accord 
with modern thought, but we are gaining from the 
movement something which is vastly more important 
than all its theories, namely its actual experience — in 
which is incorporated not only a whole phase of modern 



XV111 INTRODUCTION 

civilization and a large part of the history of our gen- 
eration but some of the deepest subconscious strivings, 
which are as yet not capable even of the most tentative 
formulation. If we study the Socialist press and period- 
icals, the tactics of the leading Socialist Congresses and 
the writings of the most representative Socialist writers 
(when they are not dealing with theoretical questions), 
we not only gain a more profound insight into Social- 
ism than by any other method, but we are laying the 
only possible authentic foundation for Socialist political 
and economic policy as well as Socialist culture and 
civilization. 

Nearly all the difficulties of Socialism in the past have 
come from the efforts of this or that theorist or faction 
to narrow it to suit their purpose. But there is now an 
opposite and equally dangerous tendency, since the move- 
ment has begun to grow so rapidly, to make Socialism 
too broad. I have given many reasons why we should 
take the broader view of Socialism, but we cannot iden- 
tify it with the universe or with all progress, for it 
would then have no definite meaning at all. We cannot 
agree with H. G. Wells, for example, that "scientific 
progress, medical organization, the advancement of edu- 
cational method, artistic production and literature are 
all aspects of Socialism.''* c This, 'to use a phrase em- 
ployed by Wells himself in another connection (only 
a few lines below), is to do "sheer violence to language." 
And what is worse, it confuses Socialism with the stage 
of society which is preceding it, and against which So- 
cialism is undoubtedly chiefly to be directed, namely 
"State Socialism." As we are now in a transition period 
between private or individualist capitalism and the so- 
called "State Socialism," much of the progress of the 
present must still be accredited to the first mentioned 
form of capitalism, while another part of present prog- 



INTRODUCTION XIX 

ress, and undoubtedly the larger part of the progress 
of the immediate future, will have to be accredited to 
"State Socialism," which is clearly what Wells means 
by Socialism in this passage. 

Because of this confusion with collectivism or "State 
Socialism," many of the efforts to define Socialism, 
though of a purely practical character, and intended 
to be based on the movement, are as misleading as any 
dogma. The best known example is the statement that 
Socialism means democratic collectivism or industrial 
democracy, a formula? that can easily be limited to the 
progressive reforms of individualist capitalism and of 
"State Socialism." The practical or political and eco- 
nomic problem of Socialism is neither how much of in- 
dustry the government controls (the problem of collect- 
ivism), nor the form of government (the problem of 
democracy), nor even how much of industry a demo- 
cratic form of government controls (the problem of dem- 
ocratic collectivism), but this — Does a class, or group of 
classes, control the government? 

It is evident that collectivism, government ownership 
of monopolies, the appropriation of the land rent by the 
state, and the placing of labor on the level of maximum 
efficiency, are not Socialism. 

"State Socialism" seeks merely to rearrange insti- 
tutions; Socialism seeks to bring new social forces into 
a position of power, which is the same as to create new 
forces as far as practical results are concerned. One 
of the chief spokesmen of British "State Socialism" (J. 
R. MacDonald) says that "Socialism is not a tour de 
force of the creative intelligence." This holds true only 
of that "State Socialism," for which this writer speaks. 
Nor is genuine Socialism the product of the creative in- 
telligence of a single person or of any limited number 
of persons, but it certainly is the product of creative in- 



XX INTRODUCTION 

telligence of humanity. MacDonald expresses the "State 
Socialist" philosophy further when he says that soci- 
ety has not been and will not be "created by human 
voluntary agency." While Socialists would agree that 
humanity has been guided chiefly by involuntary forces 
in the past, the very essence of the great change that 
Socialism is to inaugurate is that the new society is to 
be consciously organized — nor can that great revolution 
in civilization and culture be prepared for except by vol- 
untary effort. This is the meaning of Marx's well- 
known phrase, "With Socialism real history begins." 

In the early stages of the political and economic move- 
ment Socialists were accused of being "destructive." 
They replied by proving that they not only favored and 
were ready and able to aid every constructive social 
movement, but had concrete plans for the complete re- 
construction of society at every point, that is, for revo- 
lution. On its cultural side Socialism is more than con- 
structive, it is creative. For it has sought, already with 
wonderful success, not merely to direct old forces into 
new channels, or to improve and accelerate good begin- 
nings that have already been made, but to create new 
beginnings and new forces. And it has shown that in 
this creative function it is limited neither by abstract 
definitions, by political and economic programs, nor by 
historical precedents which we now call evolutionary 
"laws." 

The work of the nineteenth century radicals, to abol- 
ish outworn institutions, though it may be viewed as 
a part of the process of constructon, could scarcely sat- 
isfy the demand for a great creative social principle, as 
Spencer and Morley both acknowledged, nor can the so- 
lution of merely material problems, the providing of 
material means for civilization, the more systematic or- 
ganization of industry and the more scientific exploita- 



INTRODUCTION XXI 

tion of labor which is the kind of "construction" that 
capitalism has hitherto undertaken or proposes to under- 
take. The "State Socialism" of the immediate future 
promises to leave the present class culture intact. It 
remains for the Socialist movement to supply the prin- 
ciples and the forces required to create a new type of 
man and society. 



CONTENTS 

CHAPTER PAGE 

Preface iii 

Introduction — Socialism, a New Civilization . . v 

I. Pragmatism as a Social Philosophy i 

II. The Appeal to Science . . . . - . . .30 

III. "Evolutionism" — and After 47 

IV. The Reign of Biology 73 

V. The Abuse of History 87 

VI. Society as God 112 

VII. The Individual and the New Society — as Seen by 

Max Stirner 139 

VIII. The Socialist View of Morality 161 

IX. Nietzsche and the New Morality . . . .191 

X. The Socialist Explanation of Religion . . . 228 

XI. The New Education and the Old .... 257 

XII. Socialism and the New Education .... 296 

XIII. Man, Woman, and Socialism 321 

Appendix A — Socialism and Pragmatism, as Seen in 

the Writings of Marx and Engels .... 373 

Appendix B — Socialism and Religion .... 386 

Notes 392 

Index 405 



THE LARGER ASPECTS 
OF SOCIALISM 



THE LARGER ASPECTS OF 
SOCIALISM 

I 

PRAGMATISM AS A SOCIAL PHILOSOPHY 

Until the period of modern science and industry it 
was held that "man" was the purpose of the universe, 
which was formed in every part to serve his needs, 
either directly and physically, or in some more indirect 
and spiritual way. Just as it had formerly been believed 
that the sun revolved around our earth, so it was then 
held that Nature revolved around Man. 

Then came the beginnings of modern science and in- 
dustry and the theory of evolution and seemed at first 
to expel man forever from this central position in the 
universe. If man was now regarded as the last and 
highest product of evolution, he was all but insignifi- 
cant in the mighty whole. It was held as equally ab- 
surd, whether he regarded himself as the purpose of the 
universe, or merely made himself the center about which 
his own thinking revolves. Nothing during this period 
would have been considered more preposterous than 
Pope's saying that "the proper study of mankind is 
man" or Rousseau's that the subject on which men 
should concentrate their best thought was "the study of 
human relations/' 



2 THE LARGER ASPECTS OF SOCIALISM 

In the third period, into which we are now entering, 
mankind has again become the center — this time by 
hypothesis, that is because he chooses to place himself 
there. Man can understand the universe, it is now seen, 
only as it has a meaning for man, only in proportion as 
he can make it a part of his life and use it for his pur- 
poses. It was not created for him, but it is significant 
only as he can compel it to serve him; the new view is 
not anthropomorphic but it is anthropocentric. 

Philosophy and science evolve with society, and as 
social reorganization begins in the twentieth century to 
take the central position held during the nineteenth by 
mechanical and biological progress, all society advances 
towards a humanist or anthropocentric view. The new 
philosophy does not hold, as did the ancient and medieval 
anthropomorphism, that man is the center of the uni- 
verse, but it regards man as the center, the starting point 
and the end of all the thinking and activities of man. 
And it contends that our most deep-seated, widespread, 
and fatal errors are due to our having forgotten this 
simple and essential truth. 

Herbert Spencer spoke for the generation just gone 
when he wrote of "the littleness of human intelligence 
in face of that which transcends human intelligence." 
In the science of the Nineteenth Century mankind was, 
indeed, reduced to an atom. Not only did this affect the 
more materialistic philosophers, like Spencer, but also 
the idealists and transcendentalists that followed Kant 
and Hegel. In complete reaction both against the ma- 
terialism and the idealism of the Nineteenth Century, 
both equally remote from humanism, modern science, 
applied to sociology and psychology, is now produc- 
ing the new philosophy which usually goes under the 
name of pragmatism. 

Professor R. B. Perry excellently characterizes prag- 



PRAGMATISM AS A SOCIAL PHILOSOPHY 3 

matism as that philosophy which views knowledge as 
a mode of life, emphasizes the crucial importance of hu- 
man effort, considers civilization as the first desideratum 
and not the totality of nature, centers its attention on 
man's conquest of nature through the only true knowl- 
edge, which is power, emphasizes society rather than 
the individual, because this brings the greatest effi- 
ciency for the conquest of nature, considers man chiefly 
in his relation to his fellows rather than in his relation 
to "the universe," and "proposes to possess the future 
instead of the present and the past." Here we have in a 
few words what are undoubtedly the chief traits of this 
new philosophy. 1 

Perry also brings out sharply the contrast of pragmat- 
ism to previous philosophies. The preceding "abso- 
lutism" whether idealistic or materialistic in substance, 
was mathematical and dialectical in method, and claimed 
to establish "ultimate truths" with "demonstrable cer- 
tainty," while pragmatism holds philosophy itself to be 
no exception to the rule that all hypotheses are answer- 
able to experience. That which absolutism held to be 
most significant, namely the logical unity of the world, is 
for pragmatism a negligible abstraction. That which for 
absolutism is mere appearance — the world of time and 
space, the interaction of man and nature and of man 
and man — is for pragmatism the quintessence of reality. 
The one is the philosophy of eternity, the other the phi- 
losophy of time. 

Perry says that pragmatism is a biocentric philosophy, 
that is that it revolves around biology. This would ap- 
ply to Bergson, but for James, Dewey, and other prag- 
matists the term anthropocentric is far more accurate. 
Pragmatism came only when, to the reaction against the 
absolutism of Kant and Hegel, was added the reaction 
against the domination of philosophy by the physical and 



4 THE LARGER ASPECTS OF SOCIALISM 

natural sciences. This Perry practically admits when he 
adds "the moral and social sciences" to biology as form- 
ing together the basis of pragmatism. There is no doubt 
that the categories supplied by biology are largely re- 
sponsible for the new philosophy. But it was only when 
these categories were applied to man and his problems 
that pragmatism was born. 

Pragmatism, in its humanistic form, as formulated by 
Professor John Dewey, has arisen largely from psychol- 
ogy and related studies. But the new tendency is world- 
wide, and may be seen equally well in the effort of many 
sociologists to give their science a basis independent of 
biology. Both by the psychologists and sociologists 
philosophy is brought down from the realm of abstrac- 
tion and reduced to a view of life that can be used for 
the practical service of mankind — and must inevitably be 
so used if the modern world of thought is not to be 
reduced to the utmost chaos and confusion. 

"Philosophy," as Dewey points out, "must in time be- 
come a method of locating and interpreting the more 
serious of the conflicts that occur in life, and a method 
of projecting ways for dealing with them: a method of 
moral and political diagnosis and prognosis." The pur- 
pose of all science and philosophy is not the promotion of 
knowledge or the accumulation of data, but the service of 
man. And this is required equally for the sake of man- 
kind and the sake of science. 

Dewey says that civilization is foredoomed to failure 
except as the individual can work with a definite and 
controllable tool : "This tool," he continues, "is sci- 
ence. But this very fact, constituting the dignity of 
science and measuring the importance of the philosophic 
(i. e., scientific) theory of knowledge, conferring upon 
them the religious value once attaching to dogma and 
the disciplinary significance once belonging tp political 



PRAGMATISM AS A SOCIAL PHILOSOPHY 5 

rules, also sets their limit. The servant is not above his 
master." 2 In a word, science and philosophy, colossal as 
their importance is, do not rule life, but serve it. 

In this consistent and social form the new pragmatism 
becomes a Socialist philosophy, in which science and in- 
dustrial democracy are practically one : "Democracy, the 
crucial expression of modern life, is not so much an 
addition to the scientific and industrial tendencies as it is 
the perception of their social or spiritual meaning. . . . 
Democracy is estimable only through the changed con- 
ception of intelligence, that forms modern science, and 
of want, that forms modern industry." 3 

Thus science in its broader conception, in which the 
social sciences are also included, is taken as the basis of 
the pragmatic philosophy, while this larger science roots 
in turn in the movement toward industrial democracy, 
that is in the underlying industrial and social tendencies 
of our time. 

The central principle of all three tendencies in science, 
philosophy and society has been well expressed by 
John A. Hobson, when he says that modern thought 
recognizes that "so far as the selection, valuation and 
utilization of 'realities' go, Man is the Maker of the 
Universe." 4 

"Man is the Maker of the Universe." Here is the 
principle which underlies both modern science and phi- 
losophy and the modern social movement, that is So- 
cialism. Psychology and sociology are already doing 
away with the contrary principle, man's fear of the "laws 
of nature" — or rather the use of so-called laws of na- 
ture by the classes to hinder the faith of the masses in 
the possibilities of progress. Pragmatism, if the new 
philosophy continues to bear that name, will rapidly anni- 
hilate the reactionary philosophical theories spun out on 
the older "scientific" basis. And finally, Socialism, 



O THE LARGER ASPECTS OF SOCIALISM 

armed with the new philosophy, will revolutionize all 
civilization and culture — as soon, that is, as economic 
and social conditions permit the masses to realize and 
to utilize the new science and the new philosophy. 

Let me now very briefly summarize pragmatism as 
variously conceived by some of its modern exponents. I 
shall not deal with it at all in its extreme form, as pre- 
sented by Schiller, but only in the somewhat less ex- 
treme presentation of James, and in the very reasonable 
form in which it is given to us by Dewey, concluding 
with a few words concerning the brilliant, though fan- 
tastic, pragmatism developed by Bergson — if indeed this 
latter philosopher is a pragmatist. 

One of the best brief statements of James' stand- 
point was made by Dewey on James' death. James' phi- 
losophy, according to this statement, was a reaction 
against reigning philosophies in so far as the latter "re- 
garded reality as having a fixed and final character, and 
reduced everything to parts of one embracing whole." 
Such a theory "left no place for genuine novelty, for 
real change, for adventure, for the uncertain and the 
vague, for choice and freedom — in short, for distinctive 
individuality," while James insisted precisely on "novelty, 
plasticity or indeterminable variety and change as genu- 
ine traits of the world in which we live." Evidently in 
Dewey's view evolution had really evolved no philosophy 
of its own until James and others began to build up 
what Dewey calls the experimental philosophy. 

The basis of James' reasoning, as that of other prag- 
matists, is their attitude to truth. James demands that 
every idea be tested by the question : "What sensible 
difference to anybody will its truth make?" 5 And he 
claims that the answer to this question will put one in 
the best possible position for understanding what the 
idea means and for discussing its importance. , 



PRAGMATISM AS A SOCIAL PHILOSOPHY 7 

From this point of view the evolution of knowledge 
and the evolution of man's activities are absolutely inter- 
dependent, so that the world of thought is immediately 
and forever connected with the actual evolution of the 
world of life. 

James has a twofold remedy against the reign of 
intellectualism and abstraction. First he would restrain 
and limit the use of conceptions by the appeal to direct 
observation, and second, in the place of abstractions, he 
would use hypotheses : 

"Use concepts when they help, and drop them when 
they hinder understanding; and take reality bodily and 
integrally up into philosophy in exactly the perceptual 
shape in which it comes. . . . The only way to get the 
rest without wading through all future time in the person 
of numberless perceivers, is to substitute our various 
conceptual systems which, monstrous abridgments though 
they be, are nevertheless each an equivalent for some 
partial aspect of the full perceptual reality which we can 
never grasp. 

"This, essentially, is Bergson's view of the matter, and 
with it I think that we should rest content. . . . The 
philosopher, although he is unable as a finite being to 
compass more than a few passing moments of such ex- 
perience, is yet able to extend his knowledge beyond 
such moments by the ideal symbol of the other moments. 
He thus commands vicariously innumerable perceptions 
that are out of range. But the concepts by which he does 
this, being thin extracts from perception, are always in- 
sufficient representatives thereof; and, although they 
yield wider information, must never be treated after the 
rationalistic fashion, as if they gave a deeper quality of 
truth. The deeper features of reality are found only in 
perceptual experience. Here alone do we acquaint our- 
selves with continuity, or the immersion of one thing in 
another, here alone with self, with substance, with qual- 



8 THE LARGER ASPECTS OF SOCIALISM 

ities, with activity in its various modes, with time, with 
cause, with change, with novelty, with tendency, and 
with freedom." 6 

'The two mental functions thus play into each other's 
hands. Perception prompts our thought, and thought 
in turn enriches our perception. The more we see, the 
more we think; while the more we think, the more we 
see in our immediate experiences, and the greater grows 
the detail and the more significant the articulateness of 
our perception." 7 

The above passages give sufficiently James' view as 
to concepts or generalizations, and the role they should 
fill in philosophy and life. His discussion of the hy- 
pothesis is an equally essential part of his thought, and an 
equally important element in the reaction against intel- 
lectualism : 

" Tntellectualism' is the belief that our mind comes 
upon a world complete in itself, and has the duty of 
ascertaining its contents; but has no power of re-deter- 
mining its character, for that is already given. . . . 

"It postulates that to escape error is our paramount 
duty. . . . And if by the same act we renounce our 
chance at truth, that loss is the lesser evil, and should be 
incurred. 

"It postulates that in every respect the universe is fin- 
ished in advance of our dealings with it. . . . 

"That 'evidence' not only needs no good-will for its 
reception; but is able, if patiently waited for, to neu- 
tralize ill-will .... 

"Finally, that our beliefs and our acts based thereupon, 
although they are parts of the world, and although the 
world without them is unfinished, are yet such mere ex- 
ternalities as not to alter in any way the significance of 
the rest of the world when they are added to it." 8 

To this intellectualism James replies by advocating the 
use of the hypothesis : 



PRAGMATISM AS A SOCIAL PHILOSOPHY 9 

"We often cannot wait but must act, somehow; so we 
act on the most probable hypothesis, trusting that the 
event may prove us wise. Moreover, not to act on one 
belief, is often equivalent to acting as if the opposite 
belief were true, so inaction would not always be as 'pas- 
sive' as the intellectualists assume. It is one attitude of 
will." 9 

James endorses the statement of another philosopher 
that "we are only as we are active." The question be- 
comes, then, what real activities are. "If there be real 
creative activities in being, radical empiricism (prag- 
matism) must say somewhere that they must be imme- 
diately alive." 

James calls his pragmatism not only radical empiri- 
cism, but also humanism, an equally suggestive term. 
He accepts as humanism Dewey's view of what we 
might call the complete relativity of truth, namely, that 
"the more true" is "the more satisfactory." There is no 
truth, there are only truths, and these truths are only 
more or less true in so far as they are more or less satis- 
factory as hypotheses. 

But it is held by James and Dewey that the satis fac- 
toriness which determines the truth of a proposition 
must not conflict with "consistency." Many intellectual- 
ists have supposed that pragmatism was here surrender- 
ing its citadel to the older logic, but James goes on to 
explain that the pragmatist's logic is not the logic of the 
intellectualists. The "consistency" of which he speaks is 
"emphatically not a consistency between an Absolute 
Reality and the mind's copy of it, but an actually felt 
consistency among judgments, objects and manners of 
reacting in the mind." The logic or consistency re- 
quired by pragmatists, in other words, comes entirely 
from the practical necessities of activity. It is an out- 
come "of the natural fact that we are human beings that 



IO THE LARGER ASPECTS OF SOCIALISM 

develop mental habits — habit itself proving adaptively 
beneficial in environment where the same objects or the 
same kind of objects recur, and follow law." 10 

At times, indeed, James' standpoint is far from indi- 
vidualistic. His idea that philosophy itself must evolve 
(since it is dependent on future experience) is certainly 
as radically social as is conceivable : 

"We must not forget, in talking of the ultimate char- 
acter of our activity-experiences, that each of them is 
but a portion of a wider world, one link in the vast chain 
of processes of experience out of which history is made. 
Each partial process, to him who lives through it, de- 
fines, itself by its origin and its goal; but to an observer 
with a wider mind-span who should live outside of it, 
that goal would appear but as a provisional halting- 
place, and the subjectively felt activity would be seen 
to continue into objective activities that led far beyond. 
We thus acquire a habit, in discussing activity-expe- 
riences, of defining them by their relation to something 
more. . . . You think you are just driving this bargain, 
but, as Stevenson says somewhere, you are laying down 
a link in the policy of mankind." X1 

Perry says that to the pragmatist all knowing is "a 
phase of life, of action in an environment," and that 
"an idea is what an idea does." 12 He quotes Dewey as 
saying: "It is in the concrete thing as experienced that 
all grounds and clues to its own intellectual or logical 
rectification are contained." In experience, in "activity 
situations," in the study of the knower in his environ- 
ment, lies the problem of life, of science and of philos- 
ophy, according to pragmatism. 

"True ideas," says James, "are those that we can 
assimilate, validate, corroborate and verify. False ideas 



PRAGMATISM AS A SOCIAL PHILOSOPHY II 

are those that we can not. The truth of an idea is not 
a stagnant property inherent in it. Truth happens to an 
idea. It becomes true, is made true by events. Its verity 
is in fact an event, a process : the process namely of its 
verifying itself, its verification. Its validity is the proc- 
ess of its validation." 13 

James, as I shall show, swings around the circle, and 
comes back to positions that sometimes nearly approach 
those of theology and metaphysics (see Chapter X). It 
is largely, no doubt, his very successful and brilliant 
efforts to popularize pragmatism that have led some of 
his over-encouraged theological readers to misinterpret 
even such clear passages as the one just quoted. It is 
assumed by such readers that, if the truth of a fact is 
determined by the event, this may mean that any event, 
or, to use James' own all-too-suggestive term, any "sub- 
sequential utility," may be sufficient to establish a sup- 
posed fact as true, and that an idea may even be verified 
by "sentiment" or proved by "its immediate pleasantness 
or by its tonic effect upon the will" (Perry). Perry, on 
the contrary, would only allow such verification to estab- 
lish an idea as true in those cases where verification 
proper is impossible; in this very limited sense only, he 
thinks, is James' famous doctrine of "the right to be- 
lieve" justifiable. For such cases Perry makes the fol- 
lowing sensible provision : 

"Appeal to sensible facts and inference from estab- 
lished truth both leave the issue doubtful. But mean- 
while it is necessary to act on some such hypothesis. 
We must in the practical sense believe where we cannot 
in the theoretical sense know. And here we are justified 
in allowing our tastes and our hopes to incline the bal- 
ance. For we should be no better supported by proof 
if we believed the contrary, and should lose the emo- 
tional values beside." 14 



12 THE LARGER ASPECTS OF SOCIALISM 

Indeed, the fact that the only pragmatism known to 
the general public is that of James makes it questionable 
whether the same term should be used for the widely 
different pragmatism of Dewey with which I am chiefly 
concerned. Perry calls himself a realist; there can be 
little question that Dewey is as near to Perry as to 
James. James' pragmatism is largely philosophical, that 
of Dewey is pragmatic, in that it concerns itself with life 
rather than with ultimate generalizations. As to ulti- 
mate problems, Dewey is probably a realist as much as 
Perry — he concedes that humanity is ultimately limited 
by reality and fact. But as a pragmatist he gives chief 
weight not to the ultimate but to the proximate, and 
here what matters is not "what is," but "what man can 
do." He does not attempt to make a metaphysics out of 
pragmatism as James does, for this opens the door again 
to that very philosophic dogmatism, absolutism, and 
unrealistic idealism, against which every progressive so- 
cial and radical philosophy has arisen. In so far as 
ultimate problems are vital we must be realists. But 
consistent pragmatism holds that ultimate problems are 
not basic. To attempt to solve ultimate problems by 
pragmatic methods is the reverse of pragmatic. 

Dewey's pragmatism is consequently altogether more 
solid and circumspect than that of James. He insists 
(according to Perry) that though the truth of an idea 
is determined by the event, this is only true for "the 
specific purpose and the specific situation that gave rise 
to the idea." Dewey says: 

"It is the failure to grasp the coupling of truth of 
meaning with a specific promise, undertaking, or inten- 
tion expressed by a thing, which underlies, so far as I 
can see, the criticisms passed upon the experimental or 
pragmatic view of truth." 15 



PRAGMATISM AS A SOCIAL PHILOSOPHY 1 3 

This is a flat denial of the proposition that an idea is 
true in so far as it works in any respect whatsoever. 

The pseudo-pragmatic point of view that "an idea 
which was shown to be contrary to sensible fact, or 
contradictory to accredited truths, might be proved true 
by affording a surplus of sentimental or utilitarian 
value," is very rightly renounced by Perry and others as 
"reactionary." 16 

It must be noted, however, that James does not go so 
far as to take up an outright unrealistic point of view, 
as Schiller and some other pragmatists do. While he is 
willing that truths should be verified by a "subsequen- 
tial utility," he believes that they are at the same time 
an adaptation to real preexisting environment. While 
man makes his world, James concedes that he does not 
make the whole universe, as may be seen from the fol- 
lowing passage: 

"'For him [the pragmatist], as for his critic, there 
can be no truth if there is nothing to be true about. . . . 
This is why as a pragmatist I have so carefully posited 
"reality" ab initio, and why, throughout my whole dis- 
cussion, I remain "an epistemological realist." ' " 17 



Dewey's position is most briefly put in his little vol- 
ume, "How We Think." He points out that etymologi- 
cally "to prove a thing means primarily to try it, to test 
it." "The guest bidden to the wedding feast excused 
himself because he had to prove his oxen." Dewey in- 
sists that knowledge as well as science can be "proved" 
only in this way: 

"Not until a thing has been tried — 'tried out,' in col- 
loquial language — do we know its true worth. Till then 
it may be pretense, a bluff. But the thing that has come 



14 THE LARGER ASPECTS OF SOCIALISM 

out victorious in a test or trial of strength carries its 
credentials with it; it is approved, because it has been 
proved. Its value is clearly evinced, shown, i. e., dem- 
onstrated." 18 



The process by which we "prove" consists of a double 
movement back and forth between "facts and mean- 
ings" : 

"A movement from the given partial and confused 
data to a suggested comprehensive (or inclusive) entire 
situation; and back from this suggested whole — which, 
as suggested, is a meaning, an idea — to the particular 
facts, so as to connect these with one another and with 
additional facts to which the suggestion has directed at- 
tention." 19 

At a later stage of reasoning Dewey says we recon- 
stitute our data on the facts of the case, and that we 
mean by the facts of the case "those traits that are used 
as evidence in reaching a conclusion or forming a decis- 
ion" : 

"Thinking, in short, must end as well as begin in the 
domain of concrete observations, if it is to be complete 
thinking. And the ultimate educative value of all de- 
ductive processes is measured by the degree to which 
they become working tools in the creation and develop- 
ment of new experiences." 20 

This definition regards experience not as something 
that is presented to us, but something that we create and 
develop. Dewey, like James, points out that it is not 
our senses that define objects to us, but our practical 
activities, and that modern science is not a new kind of 
observation but a new kind of activity: 



PRAGMATISM AS A SOCIAL PHILOSOPHY 1 5 

'The substitution of scientific for superstitious habits 
... is the result of regulation of the conditions under 
which observation and inference take place." 21 

Dewey does not relegate the intellect to an inferior 
position as James and Bergson do. He even believes in 
intellectual development to the point of gradual acquire- 
ment of delight in thinking for the sake of thinking. 
His view of the function of the intellect is as appreciative 
as it is critical : 

"Abstract thinking, it should be noted, represents an 
end, not the end. The power of sustained thinking on 
matters remote from direct use is an outgrowth of prac- 
tical and immediate modes of thought, but not a substi- 
tute for them. The educational end is not the destruc- 
tion of power to think so as to surmount obstacles and 
adjust means and ends; it is not its replacement by ab- 
stract reflection. Nor is theoretical thinking a higher 
type of thinking than practical. A person who has at 
command both types of thinking is of a higher order 
than he who possesses only one. Methods that in de- 
veloping abstract intellectual abilities weaken habits of 
practical or concrete thinking, fall as much short of the 
educational ideal as do the methods that in cultivating 
ability to plan, to invent, to arrange, to forecast, fail to 
secure some delight in thinking irrespective of practical 
consequences." 22 

While he agrees that the intellectual method is "a 
transformation which the flux of life undergoes in the 
interest of practice primarily, and only subordinately in 
the interests of theory," Dewey does not conclude from 
this that intellectual knowledge is less valuable. On the 
contrary, in so far as the intellect has been purely prac- 
tical and scientific, it is to be relied upon. 

Bent on using the intellectual faculties to the full, 



l6 THE LARGER ASPECTS OF SOCIALISM 

Dewey definitely rejects all empiricism, thereby oppos- 
ing himself most completely to James. His method of 
thinking he terms not "radical empiricism," but "ex- 
perimental" or "scientific": 

"The change of attitude from conservative reliance 
upon the past, upon routine and custom, to faith in prog- 
ress through the intelligent regulation of existing condi- 
tions, is, of course, the reflex of the scientific method of 
experimentation. The empirical method inevitably mag- 
nifies the influence of the past; the experimental method 
throws into relief the possibilities of the future. The 
empirical method says, 'Wait till there is a sufficient 
number of cases' ; the experimental method says, 'Pro- 
duce the cases.' " 23 

There is all the difference in the world between ex- 
perience and experiment. Experiment follows after in- 
tellectual or theoretical thinking, experience may ignore 
this kind of thought or reduce it to an entirely subor- 
dinate role. Experimental thinking leads from hypothe- 
sis to experiment, and from experiment back to hypothe- 
sis again, from fact to meaning and meaning to fact. It- 
looks always forward to future experiment and hypoth- 
esis. Experience outside of experiment, while it lowers 
the significance of hypothesis and meaning, also looks 
to the past — which is an essential part of experience. 
In a word, whatever empiricism implies beyond experi- 
ment is the very opposite to experiment. 

This experimental attitude Dewey considers to be 
natural to mankind from his infancy. And it has only 
to be protected and perfected : 

"The attitude of childhood is naive, wondering, ex- 
perimental; the world of man and nature is new. Right 
methods of education preserve and perfect this attitude, 
and thereby short-circuit for the individual the slow 



PRAGMATISM AS A SOCIAL PHILOSOPHY 1 7 

progress of the race, eliminating- the waste that comes 
from inert routine." 24 

Far from regarding "the evolution of the race" with 
awe, Dewey, it will be seen, considers it to have been 
altogether too slow and proposes a short circuit. This 
mode of thought is equally far removed from that of 
the historians, of the biological "evolutionists," and of 
James in his effort to find a function for all the religious 
aberrations of mankind. 

Bergson bases his philosophy on a radical separation 
of biology from physics, Dewey on a union of biology 
and psychology. The union of mind and matter is 
solved, or avoided, by studying the nature of life and its 
evolution. 

"The pragmatic theory points out that mind or intelli- 
gence is an accomplishment of just this process of or- 
ganic growth in nature and in society." Mind is, so to 
speak, a device for keeping track of the increased dif- 
ferentiation and multiplication of conditions, and plan- 
ning for and arranging for in advance, ends and means 
of activity which will keep these various factors in 
proper adjustment to one another. 25 

Not only does Dewey insist that mind is developed 
chiefly through social activity, but also that social sym- 
pathy is essential to sound thinking. He and Professor 
Tufts object to the separation of intellect and emotion 
from one another, and add that "the only truly general, 
the reasonable, as distinct from the merely shrewd or 
clever," is "the generous thought." 26 

"Sympathy," continue these writers, "is the general 
principle of moral knowledge, not because its commands 
take precedence of others (which they do not necessar- 
ily), but because it furnishes a most reliable and effica- 



l8 THE LARGER ASPECTS OF SOCIALISM 

cious intellectual standpoint. It supplies the criterion par 
excellence for analyzing complex cases." 27 It is this 
same sympathetic or vital relationship with our subject 
which Bergson proposes as the basis of a greater sci- 
ence of life and human evolution, though he adopts a 
psychology the very opposite of Dewey's when he con- 
trasts this inner or intuitional attitude with the intellec- 
tual, instead of fusing the two into one. 

Pragmatism, as represented by Dewey, insists not only 
that philosophy must be viewed as a product of the so- 
cial environment, but that psychology must also be 
studied in the same light. The human mind is to be 
understood neither by any amount of abstract discus- 
sion, nor by any amount of experimentation, but is a 
product of evolution, and should be studied only from 
the standpoint of biology and the evolution of man, espe- 
cially in society, — "experience is a matter of function 
and habits, of active adjustments and readjustments, of 
coordination of activities rather than of states of con- 
sciousness." 28 If states of consciousness are abandoned 
as the material of psychology, we see that even the work 
of James must rapidly become antiquated, just as his 
broad but individualistic discussion of religion is out- 
grown because it gives consideration neither to social 
environment nor to social evolution. For to Dewey, 
mind itself being largely a social organ, states of con- 
sciousness are therefore, for the most part, significant 
and comprehensible only as they fulfill some social func- 
tion. 

It can be shown that on one side pragmatism is a 
reaction against and a departure from older philoso- 
phies, the result of the profound studies of these phi- 
losophies made by the pragmatists ; but it does not de- 
pend on them, and would have arisen quite independ- 
ently. Its basis is social evolution, and not evolution in 



PRAGMATISM AS A SOCIAL PHILOSOPHY IO, 

the world of ideas. Dewey does not at all agree with 
Hegel that intellectual progress consists in the reaction 
of the new idea against the old, but rather holds that, 
with the evolution of industry, science , and society, the 
most fundamental of the old questions become practi- 
cally unimportant and are therefore abandoned. 

"Intellectual progress," says Dewey, "usually occurs 
through sheer abandonment of such questions, together 
with both of the alternatives they assume — an abandon- 
ment that results from decreasing vitality and interest in 
their point of view. We do not solve them; we get over 
them. Old questions are solved by disappearing, evap- 
orating, while new questions corresponding to the 
changed attitude of endeavor and preference take their 
place." 29 

According to this, the true pragmatic standpoint, there 
are not several lines of evolution, the evolution of phi- 
losophy, the evolution of science, the evolution of ma- 
chinery, and so forth, but only one, the evolution of so- 
ciety. And it is on this evolution that philosophy 
must rest. Dewey regards philosophy as being not a 
cause but a result, the product of social evolution, though 
he does not underestimate its importance on that ac- 
count. "The genetic standpoint makes us aware that the 
systems of the past are neither fraudulent impostures 
nor absolute revelations; but are the products of politi- 
cal, economic, and scientific conditions whose change 
carries with it change of theoretical formulations." 30 
This might be called the economic interpretation of 
philosophy; it is completely in accord with the Socialistic 
standpoint. 

Dewey's view of the history of philosophy is prac- 
tically identical with the Socialist view of history in 
general. The thinking of the individual is necessarily 



20 THE LARGER ASPECTS OF SOCIALISM 

dependent to a high degree on his social environment, on 
the stage of history in which he lives. For instance, 
Dewey portrays the conditions in ancient Greece, and 
shows that not only the politics but also the whole phi- 
losophy of Plato and of Aristotle were dependent on 
these conditions. With Plato the "pure reason" or the 
"ideal" played the tyrant, just as custom had previously 
done in the society that preceded Plato ; "reason was to 
take the place of custom as a guide of life ; but it was to 
furnish rules as final, as unalterable as those of custom." 
The rules that Plato furnished were, like the previously 
existing customs, founded on the economic and social 
conditions of the time; not only in spirit but in fact. 

"The city-state was a superficial layer of cultured citi- 
zens, cultured through a participation in affairs made 
possible by relief from economic pursuits, superimposed 
upon the dense mass of serfs, artizans, and laborers. 
For this division, moral philosophy made itself spiritual 
sponsor, and thus took it up into its own being. Plato 
wrestled valiantly with the class problem; but his out- 
come was the necessity of decisive demarcation after 
education, of the masses in whom reason was asleep and 
appetite much awake, from the few who were fit to rule 
because alertly wise. The most generously imaginative 
soul of all philosophy could not far outrun the institu- 
tional practices of his people and his times." 31 



Nor did the philosophy of Aristotle rest on any more 
concrete or lasting basis. His ideal state was a militant 
city state just as Plato's was, and, like Plato, he idealized 
on the supposition that conditions around him were 
lasting : 

"Aristotle's assertions that the state exists by nature, 
and that in the state alone does the individual achieve 



PRAGMATISM AS A SOCIAL PHILOSOPHY 21 

independence and completeness of life, are indeed preg- 
nant sayings. But as uttered by Aristotle they meant 
that, in an isolated state, the Greek city-state, set like 
a garlanded island in the waste sea of barbaroi, a com- 
munity indifferent when not hostile to all other social 
groupings, individuals attain their full end. In a social 
unity which signified social contraction, contempt, and 
antagonism, in a social order which despised inter- 
course and glorified war, is realized the life of excel- 
lence! . . . Aristotle promptly yielded to the besetting 
sin of all philosophers, the idealization of the existent: 
he declared that the class distinctions of superiority and 
inferiority as between man and woman, master and slave, 
liberal-minded and base mechanic, exist, and are justified 
by nature — a nature which aims at embodied reason." 32 

Dewey points out that all the limitations of the nar- 
row city states of Greece became fixed in a philosophy 
which was as narrow as they, especially in "its inability 
socially to utilize science." Leaving physical science to 
one side, the ancient philosophy had no way by which 
it could automatically grow and expand, but was worked 
up from the very beginning into a moral theory; that 
is, it was directed, and even developed in the first in- 
stance, for political ends. The Greek philosophers did 
not subject the individual to the actually existing state, 
nor the state to the individual, but they wished to sub- 
ject both to an "external cosmic order," that is to say, 
to a kind of theocracy which "restricted the free use of 
doubt, inquiry, and experimentation, of the human in- 
telligence." 33 In other words, the one, but fatal, fault 
of the Greek philosophy was that it was not evolution- 
ary, and this led to the very same philosophical and so- 
ciological errors that are serving as the basis of the 
"State Socialism" of our time — to which, indeed, Plato's 
Republic is in many respects similar. 



22 THE LARGER ASPECTS OF SOCIALISM 

I shall not follow Dewey's brief sketch of the history 
of philosophy farther, but shall merely take his refer- 
ence to the greatest of modern philosophers, Kant and 
Hegel, men who wrote after modern science had first 
dawned on the world, but before the renaissance of biol- 
ogy and psychology and before the latest and greatest 
industrial revolution — that of transportation — had taken 
place, i. e., before industrial democracy was dreamed of. 
Living at a time when individualist capitalism was being 
founded, it was natural that Kant should make the in- 
dividual the center of the Cosmos. He looked at society 
as composed of individuals who "are ends in them- 
selves." But having broken the authority of mere tra- 
dition by this thoroughly revolutionary and pragmatic 
principle, Kant, like his Greek predecessors, almost suc- 
ceeded in retracing his steps and establishing a new au- 
thority. 

"Reason became a mere voice which, having nothing in 
particular to say, said Law, Duty in general, leaving to 
the existing social order of the Prussia of Frederick the 
Great the congenial task of declaring just what was 
obligatory in the concrete. The marriage of freedom 
and authority was thus celebrated with the understand- 
ing that sentimental primacy went to the former and 
practical control to the latter." 34 

The only difference in practical effect between Kant's 
philosophy and the Greek was that Kant's ethics and 
theology were somewhat separated from his metaphysics, 
which provided a large and independent foundation for 
physical science, and that he did not succeed altogether 
in counterbalancing his elevation of the individual by his 
elevation of "Reason." 

Hegel delivered a second blow at tradition and author- 
ity by making the evolution of humanity his central 



PRAGMATISM AS A SOCIAL PHILOSOPHY 23 

concept and this was a tremendous advance, but he did 
not stop there. 

"The outcome was the assertion that history is reason, 
and reason is history: the actual is rational, the rational 
is the actual. It gave the pleasant appearance (which 
Hegel did not strenuously discourage) of being specifi- 
cally an idealization of the Prussian nation, and inci- 
dentally a systematized apologetic for the universe at 
large." 

In neither the case of Hegel nor in that of Kant does 
Dewey minimize their importance, because their work, 
like that of all other philosophers, was relative to the 
times in which it was conceived. The philosophy of 
Hegel is only human and like that of Plato represents 
both the period in which he lived and the class to which 
he belonged. 

"But in intellectual and practical effect, it lifted the 
idea of process above that of fixed origins and fixed ends, 
and presented the social and moral order, as well as 
the intellectual, as a scene of becoming, and it located 
reason somewhere within the struggles of life." 35 

Both Kant and Hegel, not only in their social philos- 
ophy but even in their metaphysics, reflected the par- 
ticular form of government the ruling classes had 
evolved in their time, namely, the semi-capitalistic, semi- 
individualistic autocracy of Prussia. By allowing for 
this fact we lose 'nothing of their message, but, on the 
contrary, are far more free to accept and assimilate all 
that seems good in their thinking, in spite of its inevitable 
limitations. 

Bergson's criticism of philosophy has the same basis 
as Dewey's, except that he centers attention on the evo- 
lution of science rather than the evolution of society, and 



24 THE LARGER ASPECTS OF SOCIALISM 

we may admit that science is the intermediary in. this 
connection. Hitherto philosophy has not examined suf- 
ficiently into the basis of the reasoning of the sciences, 
and this is why much that it has done has become almost 
valueless, because it has been simply the slave of physi- 
cal and chemical science and of that natural science that 
is based upon them. Psychology, biology, sociology, 
and philosophy have suffered because they have allowed 
physical science to dominate in fields where it should be 
subordinate, so that the overthrow of the merely me- 
chanical philosophy of Spencer or Haeckel is equally 
important to science, to philosophy, and to social prog- 
ress. 

The mechanical philosophies, Bergson says, are de- 
scendants of the opposite or "final" philosophies that 
have ruled since the days of Plato, and all have grown 
out of man's life and history. They are all reflections 
of the kind of thinking that man learned from his work. 
Everything that he did had its means and its ends. The 
attention of the first philosophers was fixed on moral 
problems and ultimate ends, and their philosophies were 
then all "final," i. e., they were either theological or 
closely resembled theology. Later, as man began to 
gain a control of nature, his attention was centered on 
means. He lived with the forces of nature and his 
philosophy became mechanical. Our philosophy must, 
according to the pragmatist view, continue to be drawn 
from our activities. But we do not need to lose our- 
selves any longer either in original causes or ultimate 
ends ; and our attention becomes more and more fixed 
in the process itself, in the transformation of means into 
ends and the incorporation of ends in means, i. e., in 
human evolution. 

Evolution, in other words, makes any philosophy of 
the older kind impossible, though it by no 'means obvi- 



PRAGMATISM AS A SOCIAL PHILOSOPHY 25 

ates the necessity for a philosophy, *. e., the most sys- 
tematic and the broadest generalizations that are con- 
sistent with our new activities. Evolutionary philoso- 
phy, however, can no more be given a complete form, 
can no more near completion than can evolutionary sci- 
ence. It must be the collective and progressive work 
"of many thinkers, of many observers also, completing 
one another, correcting one another, adjusting them- 
selves to one another." 36 

Science and philosophy are social products, but so- 
ciety is in turn affected in the profoundest possible way 
by this same science and philosophy. That is, in mak- 
ing philosophy a product of social evolution and a tool 
for social activity, Dewey does not at all overlook its 
profoundest aspect and its power actually to create. But, 
as a pragmatist, he is even more interested in life and in 
social problems than he is in philosophy or psychology. 
Philosophy, psychology, pedagogy, are constantly revo- 
lutionized by the evolution of the social environment, 
but the more important aspect of the matter is that this 
new philosophy, psychology and pedagogy must in turn 
have a revolutionary effect on social evolution. Intel- 
ligence become practical means practice become re- 
sponsible : 

"Theory located within progressive practice instead of 
reigning statically supreme over it, means practice itself 
made responsible to intelligence ; to intelligence which 
relentlessly scrutinizes the consequence of every practice 
and which exacts liability by an equally relentless pub- 
licity." 37 

The older idealism, in divorcing theory from practice, 
allowed the materialism of the age to become more ma- 
terialistic still, and this is what Dewey refers to when 



26 THE LARGER ASPECTS OF SOCIALISM 

he speaks of theory having reigned statically supreme 
over practice. This condition is to be reversed, that is, 
revolutionized, as theory and practice become one. 

And just as the marriage of theory and practice prom- 
ises so much for the future, so their separation in the 
past Dewey believes to have been one of the chief forces 
that have retarded social evolution. He says that the 
diversion of the intelligence from practical problems, 
"from discrimination of plural and concrete goods, from 
noting their conditions and obstacles, and from devising 
methods for holding men responsible for their concrete 
use of powers and conditions, has done more than brute 
love of power to establish inequality and injustice among 
men." And this view also accords thoroughly with that 
of the Socialist writers when they say that real human 
history, the conscious effort of mankind as a whole to 
improve its condition has not yet begun and will only 
begin with Socialism. 

But Dewey sees also that the spiritual domination of 
mankind through false ideas and their material domi- 
nation through brute forces are in essence one, that the 
diversion of the minds of men from real to fictitious 
problems through the separation of theory and practice 
"has confirmed with social sanctions the principles of 
feudal domination." 

"All men require moral sanctions in their conduct," 
he writes, "Class-codes of morals are sanctions, under 
the caption of ideals, of uncriticised customs ; they are 
recommendations, under the head of duties, of what 
the members of the class are already most given to doing. 
If they are to obtain more equable and comprehensive 
principles of action, exacting a more impartial exercise 
of natural power and resource in the interests of a 
common good, members of a class must no longer rest 
subject in responsibility to a class whose traditions con- 



PRAGMATISM AS A SOCIAL PHILOSOPHY 27 

stitute its conscience, but must be made responsible to a 
society whose conscience is its free and effectively organ- 
ized intelligence." 38 

This social philosophy is in complete accord with that 
of the Socialists. Socialists speak of the coming victory 
of one class over another, but a society without classes 
is the object of the conflict. And the chief resistance 
to the new society that is forming, and to human prog- 
ress generally, comes from the morality, the culture and 
the civilization of the ruling class. 

The most positive result of the pragmatic philosophy 
for Socialism, as far as its broader generalisations go 
(I discuss the applications of this philosophy throughout 
the remainder of the volume) lies in the fact that phi- 
losophy itself evolves and must continue to evolve; this 
means, of course, that both evolutionary and Socialist 
philosophy must evolve. And just as the former has 
already advanced from the vague shape which it held 
in the minds of Darwin and Spencer, so the latter has 
also advanced from the form it had with Marx and 
Engels, and these currents are coming together in the 
far more subtle and at the same time more practical 
pragmatism of such men as Dewey. 

Not only do philosophies evolve, but the fact that they 
evolve must be made the basis of philosophy. "The 
thoroughly vital question for us all," says James, "is 
what is this world going to be — what is life going to 
make of itself?" And one of the most vital questions 
as to the future of the world and life is "What is phi- 
losophy going to be?" We can only hope to see ahead 
a few years, and even there our chief conclusions are 
negative, though none the less valuable for that. We 
can see, for example, that the philosophy of the future, 
like that which is forming to-day, is going to look ahead, 



28 THE LARGER ASPECTS OF SOCIALISM 

and not backward, as a great deal of the philosophy of 
the past has done. To look ahead practically means 
for men to develop their power over their nature and 
themselves, and not to give their strength to abstract 
speculation. And this conclusion can seem negative only 
to those whose object is speculation and not life. 

The most valuable part of every philosophy has always 
been that intellectually negative and destructive criticism 
of the previous philosophies which serves as an introduc- 
tion to the new dogma at which the philosopher has 
aimed. For certain subconscious, involuntary, and un- 
felt assumptions that are too certain and matter-of-fact 
to be felt as being even worthy of expression underlie 
this criticism in large part and are at the bottom the 
most positive, social and lasting contributions of the phi- 
losophy. The so-called constructive ideas, on the other 
hand, have always been dogmatic, ultra-intellectual, un- 
related to many important phases of life, largely indi- 
vidualistic, and destructive of the most vital impulses, of 
subconscious and semi-conscious strivings, and of new 
thought. 

Pragmatism is the first philosophy that has rested 
satisfied with this criticism and has attempted no purely 
intellectual construction. It is only when considered 
from a purely intellectual standpoint that it is negative, 
however. For underlying this criticism is the assump- 
tion, become conscious, willed and felt at last, that the 
intellect is of no value whatever in itself but exists purely 
for the service of life. 

Pragmatism therefore does not seek to show what the 
intellect in itself can accomplish for man, but what it 
can do to aid him in all his activities : natural science, 
sociology and psychology, education, literature and art. 

Pragmatism, in a word, teaches that the ourpose of 
philosophy is merely to supply methods of investigation 



PRAGMATISM AS A SOCIAL PHILOSOPHY 20, 

and thought. In itself it is only a spirit drawn from 
the practical needs and activities of men; in its applica- 
tion it is a revolution in all the higher fields of human 
effort, the great social revolution, as it appears in the 
world of thought.* 

* For the pragmatic tendencies in the writings of the historic 
formulators of Modern Socialism, Marx and Engels, see Appendix A. 



II 

THE APPEAL TO SCIENCE 

The new philosophy opposes all intellectual authority. 
Above all, it denies the authority of "Science," viewed 
as an accumulation of "facts" or "laws." At the same 
time it is the philosophy of science, for its aim is to 
make the scientific method and attitude the basis of all 
human thought and activity. 

In the daily thinking of most educated people science 
is held to have provided us with certain universal "laws," 
though the true scientist has long ago admitted that sci- 
ence works exclusively with hypotheses. But it is inevita- 
ble that the general public should take the broadest hy- 
potheses of the day, such as those of evolution, and make 
them the foundation of its thinking. The only cure for 
this is that the generalizations of science should be so 
broad and so hypothetical in their very form of statement 
as no longer to be capable of use for the purpose of setting 
up these new dogmas, which have been so well termed 
the "superstitions of science." 

Unfortunately for this purpose the philosophers of 
science until the advent of pragmatism almost ignored 
the broadest of all hypotheses, the basis of science itself. 
They forgot that science owed its origin to the evolution 
of human society, and that its future lay exclusively in 
the service of that society. This social or pragmatic 
hypothesis regards science as a means, the previous phi- 

30 



THE APPEAL TO SCIENCE 3 1 

losophies of science regarded it as an end ; pragmatism 
wishes science to serve life, evolutionism wanted science 
to rule over life. 

In answer to the question, "What knowledge is the 
most worth?", Herbert Spencer did not hesitate for a 
moment to answer, "Science." If the term were used 
in a sufficiently broad sense, including psychological 
and social science, this is precisely the pragmatic and 
Socialist attitude, but Spencer himself and nearly all 
of his successors used the word "Science" in a restricted 
sense (indicated by the capital "S") in which the physi- 
cal and natural sciences dominate the whole, either be- 
cause they are held to be the most fundamental or be- 
cause the body of ascertained and measurable facts 
is greater in this field, or because the manner of think- 
ing that is natural to these sciences and dominates them 
is conceived to be the best. 

It is in the spirit of this same crude and dogmatic 
materialism that Haeckel has referred to evolution as 
"the key to the universe." Certainly it is a vast advance 
that science and philosophy are being reconstructed 
around the evolutionary concept, but nothing could be 
more wholly unscientific than the assumption that we 
have in evolution, or any other hypothesis, a "key to the 
universe." If, then, we find a Socialist philosopher like 
Dietzgen offering a system of scientific reasoning as a 
key to the riddles of the universe, we will certainly at- 
tach no particular significance to the fact that he was a 
Socialist, but merely remember that he was caught, as 
even Socialists must frequently be (according to their 
own philosophy), in the current of his times. 

Kautsky and other leading Socialists, following Marx, 
attack the prevailing scientific philosophy, especially in 
the social sciences, on the very ground of its materialism, 
"which stands below that of the Eighteenth Century be- 



32 THE LARGER ASPECTS OF SOCIALISM 

cause it is a purely natural philosophy and has no theory 
of society to show." Kautsky does not abandon the use 
of the term "dialectical materialism" for the underlying 
philosophy of Socialism, as we might expect him to do 
in view of this critical attitude toward present-day sci- 
ence, but he insists that this phrase means something 
very different from the materialism of natural science. 
He has tried all conceivable alternatives for materialism 
and found them wanting. "The word socialism covers 
to-day such various wares, among them some really 
worthless, Christian and national socialisms of all kinds," 
that he finds the "socialist philosophy" insufficient. He 
also rejects the proposed phrases "dialectical monism" 
and "dialectical realism." 5 

Here we see into the very heart of the Socialist think- 
ing on this fundamental question — at least in Germany. 
It does not seem to be held conceivable that a Socialist 
philosophy could exist without Hegel's theoretical and 
abstract "dialectics" (see Appendix A). The habit of 
absolute generalization has not yet completely broken 
down, and in so far the modern scientific spirit is not 
yet wholly adopted. But the word "materialism" is used 
merely in lieu of a better one. The alternative expres- 
sions which Kautsky considers, "monism," "realism," 
and others, show that the Socialist reasoning is concrete, 
that it makes no separation between the physical and the 
psychical and that it views science and philosophy as a 
single whole. And indeed Kautsky claims that the 
greatest contribution Marx has made to the world's 
thought is not in the field of economics so much as 
in the efforts that he made towards the unification of 
the social and natural sciences by uniting them both with 
life itself. Whether Marx wholly achieved this ob- 
ject in his own thinking might be questioned, but it 
cannot be denied that he has been the chief promoter 



THE APPEAL TO SCIENCE 33 

of a movement which promises to achieve it in the near 
future. 

The true bond that holds the sciences together and 
gives them a rational basis is what an able thinker has 
called "the work of human reconstruction." Separated 
from this social foundation not only are the natural and 
psychological sciences divided by an impassable gulf, but 
all the sciences tend to disintegrate, and to become irre- 
sponsible toward one another as they become irrespon- 
sible to society, until finally the demand becomes irre- 
sistible for a scientific dogma to bind them together 
again. The natural unifying force, human service, hav- 
ing failed, there results either chaos or an artificial sys- 
tem — such as that of Spencer or of Haeckel. 

Related to the doctrine that progress must be slow 
(see the following chapter), John A. Hobson says there 
is another equally reactionary doctrine, viz. "that prog- 
ress can only be secured by rigorous division of labor." 

"Thus retarded and divided, the powers of reason 
were no longer available for co-operation in the great 
work of human reconstruction. If scientists are kept 
in touch with practice and reality, the crudely exag- 
gerated specialism would necessarily disappear; it is the 
result of the artificial and unnatural isolation of scientists 
and owed its origin to the leisure and privileged classes." 

Hobson points out that this doctrine of thorough 
and expert work in a narrow field "under the guise of 
modest industry was in large degree a cloak for intel- 
lectual cowardice." 

"The trend," he continues, "was everywhere toward 
division of labor, breaking 'the one' into 'the many.' 
Now division of labor is only a true economy when 
a sound principle of co-operation underlies and dom- 
inates the division, maintaining the supremacy of the 



34 THE LARGER ASPECTS OF SOCIALISM 

unity and harmony of the whole process. Modern sci- 
ence has preserved no such economy. . . . There is no 
warrant for believing that the notion that 'a simple sys- 
tem of natural liberty' and 'enlightened self-interest' is 
any better economy in the intellectual than in the indus- 
trial field. ... It is not that intellectual labor is 
over-divided, but that there is no proper correlation of its 
specialisms, no proper harvesting and assimilations of 
its fruits. This can only be attributed to an abandon- 
ment of central intellectual control." 16 

Hitherto it has been generally held that the work of 
the great mass of scientists, whether directly related to 
the other activities of humanity or not, has always more 
or less general value and usually a high practical value 
also, so that the change of attitude proposed by Dewey 
and Hobson and the scientists and philosophers who 
think as they do will mean a revolution in the world of 
thought. It is true that in the past also many of the 
great scientific thinkers have been consciously or uncon- 
sciously inspired by some social ideal. But it is also 
true that some of the most profound and acute intel- 
lects we have possessed have gone astray because they 
did not hold in view the essentially human end of all 
scientific research. No matter how brilliant their minds 
and how great their labors, it is practically certain that 
a large part of their work will not fit in with the rest 
of science and will be largely discarded or outgrown 
before it has proved of any value. 

Science rests chiefly on the highly organized social 
machinery made possible by the discovery of printing 
and later by improved methods of communication. For 
what is it that differentiates modern science from all that 
went before? Is it not evident that it is nothing else 
than cooperative effort both in the thinking out of 
hypotheses and in the observation of facts-? If one 



THE APPEAL TO SCIENCE 35 

consults any book of science nowadays one finds not 
only thousands and tens of thousands of references to 
the work of other scientists, published largely in peri- 
odicals, which imply not only constant cooperation, but 
also more or less familiarity with the generalizations and 
the investigations of all the related sciences. This was 
recognized at the very dawn of science, in Francis Ba- 
con's Utopia, "The New Atlantis," which was concerned, 
not with mere political or economic changes, but almost 
exclusively with the new science he predicted, with its 
discoveries, still more with its methods, and most of all 
with the form of social organization for scientific pur- 
poses which underlies those methods and makes them 
possible. 

Spencer, having forgotten these fundamental facts, 
was thrown back on the old dogmatic habit of thought. 
Reasoning, for instance, against any theory of equal hu- 
man rights, he says that under any given circumstances 
it would be impossible to reduce such a theory to prac- 
tice, and his ground is this : that, since no absolutely uni- 
versal principle of equality can be found, no principle 
can be found. Socialists would not argue that a system 
of social inequality based on a theory of unequal rights 
would be impracticable under all circumstances, but that 
it would be undesirable under any of the circumstances 
with which we are familiar in present-day civilization. 

With the same abstract logic Spencer reasons that 
Socialism, based on a distribution of wealth in accord- 
ance with the productivity of each laborer, is impossible 
because we cannot ascertain what each has contributed. 
Socialists would reply that, while it is perfectly true that 
no accurate measure can be found, there are many cases 
to-day where an approximation toward such a measure 
has been made and approved by all concerned — as, for 
instance, in many producing families, in some partner- 



36 THE LARGER ASPECTS OF SOCIALISM 

ships, in some cooperative societies, etc. And, worst of 
all, Spencer actually wants us to believe that until "com- 
munism" can be carried to the same extent as "those 
compound polyps in which a number of individuals are 
based upon a living trunk common to them all . . . it 
will be best to stand by the old doctrine." 9 In other 
words it is always "all or nothing." All this kind of 
a priori reasoning comes from the eighteenth century 
and is preevolutionary. Communism, for instance, is 
already practiced in many public school systems — so 
Spencer was forced to close his eyes to the possibility of 
such a "communistic" institution being permanent. 

Spencer's social and political views and prejudices 
were an exaggeration of those of his class; his general 
scientific attitude was that of his whole generation. Not 
only did he refuse to respect scientific generalizations 
which were not universal, but in applying them to hu- 
man affairs he gave them almost the same force as the 
theologians had claimed for their dogmas or the abso- 
lute kings for their laws. The most he hoped for hu- 
manity, it seemed, was that it would at least be gov- 
erned by "laws" rather than by sheer coercion. He 
even feared that this time was far off, that it would be 
long before "reverence for law as rooted in the moral 
order of things will serve for the power of reverence 
which enforces laws." 10 But to the modern Socialist 
and pragmatist one reverence is as bad as another, and 
moral or the scientific dogmatism is only one degree bet- 
ter than external force which rules in a military despot- 
ism. 

"Laws of science," says Dewey, "are not govern- 
mental regulations which limit change, but are conve- 
nient formulations of selected portions of change fol- 
lowed through a longer or shorter period of time, and 
then registered in statistical forms that are amenable to 



THE APPEAL TO SCIENCE 37 

mathematical manipulation. To suppose that this de- 
vice of short-hand symbolization presages the subjection 
of man's intelligent effort to fixity of law and environ- 
ment is interesting as a culture survival, but it is not 
important for moral theory." n Elsewhere Dewey has 
objected that science is not a body either of fact or of 
law, but only an effective method of inquiry. Spencer 
himself defined science as "an extension of the percep- 
tions by means of reasoning" or as "quantitative pre- 
vision." Both of these definitions are sound because 
they point to processes rather than to facts or laws. So 
that the science and social science which Socialists sup- 
port teaches, not any body of definite generalizations or 
dogmas, whether the universal laws of Spencer or the 
universal hypotheses of Mill, but only to see always far- 
ther into our natural and social environment in order to 
foresee what is likely to happen, or what mankind can 
accomplish. 

Dogmatism and opportunism are the inevitable result 
on both sides of the separation of science from the social 
movement. In his profound study of the logic of moral 
science, Dewey denies that scientific generalizations can 
be expected to be free from the personal prejudices and 
social position of the scientific observer. In other 
words, the scientist's personal equation and social envi- 
ronment are at least as important as his observations. 
Scientists are subject to their social environment just as 
non-scientists are. This finally deposes science from the 
position of irresponsible dictator, free of all social con- 
trol, which she occupies in so many minds. If Dewey 
expects science to guide us, this does not mean that he 
expects the scientists to guide us. Only in so far as 
the true spirit of science has been held to by the scien- 
tists, and only as this spirit has been grasped by the 
community at large, can science actually guide our social 



38 THE LARGER ASPECTS OF SOCIALISM 

life; and only as life and science are truly social is true 
science possible. 

This is very far from a priesthood of science, as pro- 
posed by Mill and others. Such a priesthood would be 
the very climax of class government, whereas Socialism 
and pragmatism teach that we are going in the very op- 
posite direction, toward a social revolution that will put 
an end to all aristocracies, even this so-called aristocracy 
of intellect, and establish democratic control. Herbert 
Spencer also leans in the same direction, when in his "so- 
ciology" (in passages quoted below) he fully recognized 
the possibility that a man of science might err in socio- 
logical questions. But he seemed to assume the natural 
sciences to be relatively free from ordinary human preju- 
dice and bias. 

Evolutionary science, as applied to history and sociol- 
ogy, means, as Dewey says, "that we are ceasing to 
take existing social forms as final and unquestioned," 
and that the only alternative to the inevitable revolution 
that is impending is the maintenance of "an arbitrary 
and class view of society." In his presidential address 
to the American Psychological Association (in 1899), 
he pointed out that as the new psychology "makes its 
way and is progressively applied to history and all the so- 
cial sciences, we can anticipate no other outcome than in- 
creasing control in the ethical sphere — the nature and 
extent of which can be best judged by considering the 
revolution that has taken place in the control of physical 
nature through a knowledge of her order." That is, the 
application of science to social and ethical questions 
means nothing less than the abolition of class rule in 
society. 

Psychology is perhaps the most centrally located sci- 
ence, since it touches the natural sciences on the one side 
and social science on the other, and especially in Dewey's 






THE APPEAL TO SCIENCE 39 

view, so that what is said of psychology will apply to a 
large extent to science as a whole. 

"The application of psychology to social institutions 
is the only scientific way. ... It marks just the recog- 
nition of the principle of sufficient reason in the large 
matters of social life. It is the recognition that the 
existing order is determined neither by fate nor by 
chance, but is based on law and order, on a system of 
existing stimuli and modes of reaction, through knowl- 
edge of which we can modify the practical outcome. 
There is no logical alternative, save either to recognize 
and search for the mechanism of the interplay of per- 
sonalities that controls the existing distributions of val- 
ues, or to accept as final a fixed hierarchy of persons in 
which the leaders assert, on no basis save their own 
supposed superior personality, certain ends and laws 
which the mass of men passively receive and imitate. 
The effort to apply psychology to social affairs means 
that the determination of ethical values lies, not in any 
set or class, however superior, but in the workings of the 
social whole; that the explanation is found in the com- 
plex interactions and interrelations which constitute this 
whole. . . . 

"Our control of nature, with the accompanying out- 
put of material commodities, is the necessary result of 
the growth of physical science — of our ability to state 
things as interconnected parts of a mechanism. Physical 
science has for the time being far outrun psychical. We 
have mastered the physical mechanism sufficiently to turn 
out possible goods; we have not gained a knowledge of 
the conditions through which possible values become 
actual in life, and so are still at the mercy of habit, of 
haphazard, and hence of force. . . . The anomaly in 
our present social life is obvious enough. With tre- 
mendous increase in control of nature, in our ability to 
utilize nature for human use and satisfaction, we find the 
actual realization of ends, the enjoyment of values, 



40 THE LARGER ASPECTS OF SOCIALISM 

growing unassured and precarious. At times it seems 
as if we were caught in a contradiction; the more we 
multiply means, the less certain and general is the use 
we are able to make of them. No wonder a Carlyle or 
a Ruskin puts our whole industrial civilization under a 
ban, while a Tolstoi proclaims a return to the desert. 
But the only way to see the situation steadily, and to 
see it as a whole, is to keep in mind that the entire 
problem is one of the development of science, and of 
its application to life." (My italics.) 14 

And once more the reader must be reminded that the 
modern view, as so ably represented by Dewey, assumes 
not only that the sole function of science is to serve hu- 
manity, but that it is only in so far as a science does 
this that it is logical, scientific, or in any sense real. He 
does not tolerate the widely accepted opinion that if the 
scientists are left alone to work out their sciences with- 
out conscious regard to general human affairs such a sci- 
ence will afterwards necessarily be applicable, or will 
necessarily even have a real theoretical value— provided 
only it is accepted by the world of science. 

"The world doubtless owes a great deal to its pure re- 
searches and scholars," says Dewey, "but it would owe 
a great deal more still to them if they had been edu- 
cated in social habits and thinking, and had the bear- 
ings of their abstract ideas upon social matters. As it 
is, they have been largely shunted off into an isolated 
and remote class — isolated and remote socially, that is 
— where the results of their thinking are quite 'safe' be- 
cause not translated from symbols into the facts of 



On account of their greater eloquence I shall refer to 
the expressions of literary philosophers as well as those 
of scientists. But the critical attitude to science is just 



THE APPEAL TO SCIENCE 41 

as strongly developed among the scientists themselves. 
Let me quote a few of the criticisms of William Ostwald, 
which are almost identical with those of Dewey (see his 
lecture before the Monist Congress in 191 1, entitled 
"Die Wissenschaft"). 

"We need a criterion for the endless number of things 
that we can know, in order to decide where we shall most 
of all spend our energies and what we shall leave aside 
as less important or not important at all. And the 
only criterion that exists for this purpose is the possibil- 
ity of practical prophecy. 

"Applied science is one which foretells and determines 
the future and through the accomplishments of the re- 
lations foretold brings the proof and shows that its 
prophecy is correct and reliable. . . . 

"But that criterion by which we can discriminate be- 
tween true sciences and those that are not true (or schol- 
asticism) is but little known and is never thoroughly 
used. Thus in our time, side by side with true science, a 
great mass of scholasticism arises and is cultivated so that 
the present work of our universities, for example, con- 
tains at least fifty per cent, of scholasticism." (My 
italics.) 

This criterion of Ostwald, it may be seen, is a com- 
promise between the thorough-going attack of a Nietz- 
sche and the uncritical attitude that is so common, ac- 
cording to which all science is supposed to be self- 
justified. In the demand that science must be able to 
prophesy, he distinguishes it not only from what he calls 
scholasticism, but also from intellectualism. 

Ostwald, like all the true scientific philosophers, makes 
everything depend on concrete achievements, but even 
this criterion is insufficient. All science has tended for 
years to test itself by its power to bring about concrete 
results of some kind. We may slightly paraphrase Ost- 



42 THE LARGER ASPECTS OF SOCIALISM 

wald's language and say that the test of true science 
must be not only that it must tell us which of an infinite 
number of possible investigations we shall undertake, but 
also to which of the innumerable concrete achievements 
that are possible we shall give our energies. He claims 
that the only way by which we can prevent science from 
becoming metaphysical is to make it human, and that this 
also is the only criterion by means of which we can 
choose among the infinite number of possible concrete 
achievements : "We can confidently assert that knowledge 
will be scientific in proportion to its social importance." 

When the so-called pure science is separated from "its 
mother, technique," it is separated from the soil from 
which it receives its nourishment. As a pure science is 
no longer directed by an effort to serve the human race 
it loses all direction and guidance. In a word it be- 
comes irresponsible, and when it becomes irresponsible it 
becomes an institution for manufacturing reasons for 
retrogressive social and scientific policies, or at the very 
best it becomes an excuse for individuals who refuse to 
fulfill more useful functions. 

Yet even John Stuart Mill seemed almost ready 
to adopt the priesthood of science theory, under which 
society loses all control. He taught in his "Logic" that 
"there really is one social element which is predominant 
and almost paramount among the agents of social pro- 
gression, . . . the state of the speculative faculties of 
mankind, including the speculative beliefs concerning 
themselves and the world by which they are surrounded." 
Mill did not seem to realize that speculative beliefs may 
be the opposite of progressive, that if false theories and 
generalizations serve the ruling class they will be arti- 
ficially maintained after their time and when overthrown 
will be immediately replaced by newer theories equally 
false, and so on indefinitely. 



THE APPEAL TO SCIENCE 43 

That Mill nevertheless favored government by an intel- 
lectual elite is shown further in his essay, "On Lib- 
erty," where he argues that the Many even in democracy 
should let themselves be guided by the highly gifted one 
or Few. But Professor Lester F. Ward has shown that 
exceptionally gifted children are as likely to come from 
the children of one class as from those of another, and 
that if educational opportunity is equalized the produc- 
tion of talents is likely to increase a hundred-fold. The 
enlightened few which Mill had in mind, being scarcely 
one per cent, of those who, according to Ward's calcu- 
lation, were born with natural talents, were themselves 
a part of a highly privileged class ; and Ward has demon- 
strated in detail that where the intellectually gifted were 
not well born they were nearly always favored by chance 
or circumstance. No social policy, then, could be more 
fatal than to endeavor to increase the popular respect 
for the few intellectual leaders who happened to have 
arrived at the top. They should be valued on their 
merits, but according to Ward's calculation the public 
has a right to feel that it contains potentially far more 
wisdom than they. 

"In the administration of the social estate the first and 
principal task," says Ward, "is to hunt up all the heirs 
and give to each his share. But every member of so- 
ciety is equally the heir to the entire social heritage, and, 
as we have already seen, all may possess it without de- 
priving any of any part of it. And as the social heri- 
tage consists of the knowledge that has been brought 
into the world, this task is nothing less than the diffusion 
of all knowledge among all men." 18 

This might be called the socialism of knowledge, for 
what else is the demand that all knowledge be given to 
all men, or at least an equal opportunity to acquire it. 



44 THE LARGER ASPECTS OF SOCIALISM 

The fundamental reason that civilization has progressed 
chiefly in the material field and has done so little com- 
paratively towards the full development of human beings 
is the fact that it has been confined to the few. 

"Most of the progress, due to ideas," says Ward, "is 
of that superficial kind which merely produces material 
civilization through the conquest of nature, and does not 
penetrate to the lower strata of society at all. This is 
because the truth is possessed by only a minute fraction 
of society. It therefore has great economic value but 
very little social value. What the progress of the world 
would be if all this truth were socially appropriated no 
one can foresee, but its effect would probably be propor- 
tioned to the number possessing it." 

Largely the product of a privileged class out of touch 
with the great bulk of mankind, and therefore without a 
central guiding principle, the effect of much of our sci- 
ence on general culture and education has become noth- 
ing less than reactionary. Nobody has felt some of the 
worst features of this situation more strongly, or ex- 
pressed them more powerfully, than has Friedrich 
Nietzsche : 

"The severe helotism to which the immense extent of 
the sciences at present condemns every individual," says 
Nietzsche, "is a principal reason why the more fully, 
more richly, and more profoundly endowed natures no 
longer find suitable education and suitable educators. 
There is nothing from which our civilization suffers more 
than from the superfluity of presumptuous hod-men and 
fragmental humanities; our universities are, against 
their will, the real forcing-houses for this mode of 
stunted growth of intellectual instincts." 

'The sciences, blindly driven along, on a laisser faire 
system, without a common standard, are .splitting up, 
and losing hold of every firm principle." 



THE APPEAL TO SCIENCE 45 

"Above all, the wonderful way in which the German 
savants fall to their dish of knowledge, shows that they 
are thinking more of Science than mankind; and they 
are trained to lead a forlorn hope in her service, in order 
to encourage ever new generations to the same sacrifice. 
If their traffic with knowledge be not limited and con- 
trolled by any more general principles of education, but 
allowed to run on indefinitely, — 'the more the better/ — 
it is as harmful to learning as the economic theory of 
laisser faire to common morality. . . ." 

But "science, as a whole, has a goal, a will, an ideal, 
a passion, of a great faith. . . ." 

"A philosophy, a 'creed,' must always exist, in order 
that from it sciences may receive a direction, a meaning, 
a limit, a method, a right to existence." 24 

Nietzsche deplores the effect of Copernicus's philos- 
ophy in making earth no longer the center of our uni- 
verse. This scientific attitude, he says, has made exist- 
ence look "still more fortuitous, still more commonplace, 
still more dispensable — within the visible order of 
things." 

"Is not just the self-diminution of man, is not his 
will to self-diminution ever since Copernicus making ir- 
resistible progress? Alas, the belief in his dignity, his 
uniqueness, his irreplaceability in the rank-sequence of 
beings is gone ; he has become an animal, an animal with- 
out allowance, or reserve, — he, who in his former belief 
was almost a God ('Child of God,' 'God-man'). . . . 

"It seems as though man, since Copernicus, had slid 
upon an inclined plane, — he ever more rapidly rolls away 
from the center. Whither? 'Into the Nothing? Into 
the piercing feeling of his nothingness?' . . . Good! 
This were just the straight road into the old ideal?" 25 

By his concluding words Nietzsche means that this sci- 
ence, far from leading us away from religion and asceti- 



46 THE LARGER ASPECTS OF SOCIALISM 

cism, as Tolstoi imagines, is leading us back towards 
them. He suggests that the annihilation of the signifi- 
cance of man by science is a subject of stoical 
pride to the typical scientist who maintains "this labori- 
ously acquired self-contempt of man as his last and most 
earnest claim to self-esteem." Far from curing us of 
the old superstition and dogmatism, Nietzsche says that 
this kind of non-human, or one might almost say anti- 
human "science" has given us a conception of the uni- 
verse and of man's place in it which is far more paralyz- 
ing than any of the older religious conceptions, such as 
those of "God," and "immortality." 

In an age of science, we must at least agree, what- 
ever superstitions or dogmas, whatever false methods of 
work or narrowed outlook on life, are imposed upon us 
in the name of science are a thousand times more dan- 
gerous and reactionary than those that come down to us 
from a former age. 



Ill 

"EVOLUTIONISM"— AND AFTER 

The theory of evolution is so popular that most people 
speak and act as if it was the one thing in the world not 
subject to evolution. All acknowledge that the secon- 
dary generalizations which have grown out of the evolu- 
tion hypothesis, such as "the struggle for existence" and 
"the survival of the fittest," are being continually trans- 
formed, but it is supposed that the main idea does not 
change — which shows a survival of the dogmatic habit 
of mind. It is already widely admitted, for instance, 
that the chief service of the theory of the survival of 
the fittest was as an illustration of the general theory of 
evolution, an hypothesis that helped more firmly to es- 
tablish that theory and to bring about its general accep- 
tance; but it is not generally understood that if all such 
secondary hypotheses evolve this must soon revolution- 
ize the whole theory of evolution. 

Without attempting to go into the history of the 
evolution hypothesis even during the last century, it is 
necessary for a clear conception of the Socialist attitude 
toward that theory to point out one or two changes 
through which it has passed ; I am not speaking of evolu- 
tion in the narrow sense in which it is often used as 
being primarily applicable to biology and the natural sci- 
ences, but as applying equally to all the arts and sciences 
and institutions and ideas that humanity has produced. 

Socialists remind us that the economic and political 

47 



48 THE LARGER ASPECTS OF SOCIALISM 

stage that a society has reached will always affect its 
ideas and theories, so that the great industrial revolu- 
tions of the last century must have revolutionized the 
prevailing views of evolution. At the end of the Eigh- 
teenth Century and even up to the middle of the Nine- 
teenth both political thought and scientific thought were 
largely Utopian. That is to say it was recognized that 
many social and political conditions, as well as some of 
the chief generalizations of philosophy and science, were 
not permanent and would undergo change. On the other 
hand, the thinkers of the time wrote and talked as if this 
great impending revolutionary change when once 
brought about would introduce a society, as well as a 
theoretical basis for science, which would at last be per- 
manent — the wish being father to the thought. That 
is, while they considered society to be in a state of transi- 
tion, they looked forward in the near future to a time 
when in the more fundamental matters at least this 
transition would practically cease. In other words, it 
is difficult to say whether they were evolutionists at the 
bottom or not, for they seemed to have a horror of fun- 
damental and indefinitely continued evolution. 

After the capitalist classes of England and of the Con- 
tinent had gained the upper hand (about 1848), their 
views of evolution changed materially, and a stage was 
reached which is well marked by the science and politics 
of Herbert Spencer. At this period constant evolution 
(being a need of capitalism) was accepted as applying 
without exception to all the ideas and all the institutions 
of the present and also of the immediate future. But 
the thinkers of this generation did not entirely abandon 
either the Utopian view in politics or the absolute and 
non-evolutionary conception in science. Herbert Spen- 
cer still spoke of "the perfect society," "the ultimate 
man," etc., suggesting, at least theoretically,* a time when 



EVOLUTIONISM AND AFTER 49 

evolution would be complete. These absolute concep- 
tions were still needed to establish absolute moral and 
sociological "laws" for the masses, who in the age of 
newspapers, skilled labor, and of relative international 
peace could no longer be governed by mere coercion. 
Spencer's science also had the same fault in that evo- 
lution consisted for him in a progressive adaptation to 
environment, which environment was treated as fixed 
and not as being itself in evolution. So that he actu- 
ally supposed progress toward complete adaptation or 
perfection (corresponding to Utopia) and conceived bi- 
ological evolution as having a final end — at least the- 
oretically. 

Such considerations as these suggest that even the 
prevailing conception of evolution itself, to say nothing 
of the lesser Darwinian doctrines of struggle for exist- 
ence, survival of the fittest, etc., should be viewed with a 
critical eye. It is evident, for example, that the evolu- 
tionary processes of nature are not all equally success- 
ful. When the evolutionary theory first came into 
vogue, and for a long time afterward, it was supposed 
that the mere statement that such and such a series of 
changes in biology or any other field was the one that 
actually took place was all that could be said. It was 
taken to be absurd to criticise nature, and to do this was 
supposed to be a survival of the earlier anthropocentric 
standpoint. The new view, as I have said, while dis- 
claiming any connection with this earlier anthropomor- 
phic dogmatism, in which Nature or God placed man at 
the center of the universe, is frankly anthropocentric, 
in that it holds man must place himself at the center, 
and does not hesitate to say that nature succeeds in one 
case and fails in another, does better here and worse 
there. The acceptance of this anthropocentric habit of 
mind is absolutely vital not only in biology, but espe- 



50 THE LARGER ASPECTS OF SOCIALISM 

cially in sociology, of which one of the axioms is that the 
methods by which humanity has evolved are altogether 
superior to and more economical than those by which the 
animals have developed. 

Of nature's methods before the appearance of man 
Mrs. Gilman says : 

"These are ingenious and reasonably effective, but 
their development is slow, requiring many generations of 
heartless 'elimination of the unfit' to gradually evolve 
the fit. If his claws are not good enough, he dies, those 
having somewhat better claws survive; slowly the claws 
improve. He cannot in one lifetime invent and manufac- 
ture better claws, but has to be tediously and expensively 
'selected,' the whole beast sacrificed to the defective 
claw. 

"Further, his excellence is checked by the interaction 
of parts, — all his tools being part of him, and modifying 
each other. The more things he can do, the less per- 
fectly he does a thing; the more perfectly he does a thing, 
the fewer things he can do. The beaver, for instance, 
is a highly developed builder, but he cannot run well, or 
climb trees. Where you find the most perfect specializa- 
tion of an animal's machinery to a particular function, 
you find the creature practically helpless otherwise — as 
the ant-eater. So we find the executive capacity of an 
individual animal limited, first by his body and its slow 
methods of adaptation. 

"His stimuli are also limited. This small machine is 
kept going by its own supply of nervous energy, replen- 
ished by food, sleep, air, and water. It will run so long, 
and then must rest and 'be fired up'. Special excitants 
of fear, pain, or unusual hunger may temporarily ac- 
celerate his activity, but he has then to rest the longer. 
His executive capacity is limited, second, by his small 
nervous energy and narrow range of stimulus. 

"It is further confined, thirdly, by the narrow circles 



EVOLUTIONISM AND AFTER 5 1 

of his instincts, desires, or ideas, if he has them. The 
governing impulse is simple race-preservation, mingled 
with the self-preserving instincts; egoism and familism 
cover his range of interests. Hope, fear, desire, — all 
are for self or family. 

"So we find in the individual animal, his efficiency is 
limited by (a) his personal mechanism, (b) his personal 
nerve force, and (c) his personal interests. For such 
an agent work — continuous expressions of energy — 
would indeed be difficult. But now examine the posi- 
tion of the human being. 

"Man's tools do not grow on him. He has been able 
to evolve improved tools without sacrificing a thousand 
slow generations to breed them. He adds to his execu- 
tive ability (a) the power of numbers, and of the 'ready 
race'" (wild dogs have this), (b) the power of division 
of labor (ants and bees have this), (c) the tool, de- 
tachable and exchangeable." (My italics.) 1 

Mrs. Gilman and the Socialists are by no means alone 
in this "humanism," which asserts the superiority of hu- 
man over merely biological evolution. Not only is it 
accepted by most of the sociologists, but it plays a central 
role in much of the philosophy of the time, as, for in- 
stance, in that of Bergson, who says that it is the use 
of tools which enables man to do an indefinite number of 
practical things that not only differentiates him from 
the animal world and shows the superiority of human 
evolution, but has given him intelligence instead of ani- 
mal instinct. Bergson says that we ought not to name 
mankind Homo sapiens, but Homo faber, that intelli- 
gence may even be defined as "the faculty of manufac- 
turing artificial articles and special tools for making tools 
and to vary this manufacture indefinitely." Of the ef- 
fect of the steam engine he speaks in even stronger terms 
than those usually employed by Socialists: 



$2 THE LARGER ASPECTS OF SOCIALISM 

"The revolution that it has brought about in indus- 
try has at the same time entirely upset relations be- 
tween men. New ideas are rising. New feelings are 
on the way to blooming out. In thousands of years when 
the distance of the past will only allow its broad lines 
to be perceived, our wars and our revolutions will count 
for little if they are remembered at all. But of the steam 
engine, with the influences of every kind that accompany 
it, we will speak perhaps as we are speaking now of 
bronze and cut stone; it will serve for us to define the 
age." 

This contrast between men and animals, so ably de- 
scribed by Bergson and made the very basis of his whole 
philosophy, both of the psychological and of the natural 
and physical sciences, is either ignored or denied by 
many of the scientists, the sociologists and the philoso- 
phers of our time. Animal biology has played an ab- 
surdly exaggerated role, so that instead of explaining 
problems of humanity in terms of human evolution or 
civilization, which is so infinitely superior to the animal 
kind of evolution, the overwhelming majority of writers 
constantly refer the problems of mankind to biology. 
Herbert Spencer, for instance, as well as many Socialist 
writers, including Mrs. Gilman, constantly refer to the 
psychic qualities of the two sexes being biologically de- 
termined. Now the theory of sexual selection is sharply 
questioned by leading biologists as applied even to ani- 
mals. As applied to man, it becomes fantastic. The 
contrast between the men and women of our time is due 
infinitely more to differences of early training than it is 
to fundamental biological differences. And in exact 
proportion as mankind develops, as civilization advances 
by leaps and bounds, the merely animal part of man be- 
comes of smaller importance. (I do not say that the 
physiological aspect of man becomes of less importance.) 



-AND AFTER 53 

There is a related aspect of the evolution theory, as 
commonly conceived and applied, that makes of it per- 
haps the most reactionary philosophy that the world has 
ever known; for in proportion as the theory of evolu- 
tion is broad and fundamental, so if it becomes false it 
becomes correspondingly more dangerous. Logically 
the conception of evolution belongs even more to the 
future than it does to the past, for evolution is cumula- 
tive and the rate of evolution is accelerating; and for 
all human progress it is the future alone which really 
concerns us. This is the very essence of the new prag- 
matic philosophy. But evolution has laid emphasis on 
the whole process of development, most of which lies 
in the past, rather than on the conditions and problems 
of the present. So, instead of leading us toward the 
future, it has almost universally led us back into the past. 
From the philosophical standpoint of a Dewey or a Berg- 
son evolutionary science concerns itself primarily with 
the future, but as a matter of fact it has been the cloak 
for the greatest revival of respect and reverence for the 
past that the world has ever known. Actually it is teach- 
ing, unconsciously, the same thing that was taught by 
most ancient churches, namely, that all things are to be 
respected in proportion to the length of their history. 

Nordau has expressed the close connection between the 
retrospective and the reactionary eloquently and in a very 
few words : 



"Much that outrages the intelligence to-day, by its 
absurd and contemptible injustice, is convincingly ex- 
plained by the discovery of its origin and the fact that it 
then was rational, well founded, and, if not abstractedly 
just, at least suited to the conditions of the time. Writ- 
ten history is a zealous and eloquent counsel for the ex- 
isting order, and secures acquittal or a judgment of 



54 THE LARGER ASPECTS OF SOCIALISM 

extenuating circumstances for many a client that de- 
serves condemnation." 2 



The general tendency of "culture," as it has been a 
class product, has been to turn back to the past, and the 
evolution theory, instead of impeding, has enormously 
strengthened this great reactionary force. 

In other words, we have in evolution as now com- 
monly interpreted the pure worship of what has been 
and still continues to be. In the superstitions and the 
traditions of the past there may have been an element 
at least of a poetic or symbolic truth. The religion of 
evolution to-day has not even a poetic justification. To 
be sure, it does not usually exist in a pure and undiluted 
form, and is frequently mixed with more or less of prag- 
matism. It is possible, however, to find many cases of 
a purely anti-pragmatic evolution, and this is perhaps 
the most fundamentally false and dangerous doctrine 
that was ever presented to the mind of man. 

I am not speaking of anything in the least abstruse. 
Public opinion perfectly well recognizes the danger when 
it has not become too sophisticated. W. J. Bryan, for 
instance, speaks the truth when he says that the Dar- 
winian theory is dangerous : "I don't know of any 
argument that can be used to prove that man is an im- 
proved monkey that may not be just as well used to 
prove that the monkey is a degenerate man" (lecture 
entitled "The Prince of Peace"). Indeed, we actually see 
books widely circulated to prove that certain so-called 
inferior races are halfway between the man and the 
monkey. Slavery reduced the slave to the position of a 
work animal, but theoretically it classed him as a 
man, if a totally different kind of a man. Neither the 
slave owners of Rome, nor those of our South before 
the war, had yet reached this climax of philosophy by 



55 

which they could persuade themselves that their slaves 
actually were beings somewhere between man and the 
animals. While modern sociologists, pragmatists, and 
Socialists do not deny the biological connection between 
the man and the monkey, they do not apply biological 
generalizations without qualification to men, for they be- 
lieve with Bergson that the revolution that has been gone 
through with since we were something less than men is 
the most momentous fact in the universe. 

If we are not to make a misanthropic religion out of 
evolution, we must, above all, avoid any element of 
fatalism in our view of it — we must never say that what 
was must have been. We must remember that evolution 
in this and that case should be conceived of as having 
been slower than it might have been, and that evolution 
actually may go backward, which implies that it could 
also go forward more rapidly than it has. Degeneracy 
is universally, acknowledged to occur, but it is supposed 
to be always the degeneration of the unfit. What I am 
suggesting, and it seems in accord with scientific fact, 
is that what we might call a perfectly normal, fit, and 
admirable species, adapting itself successfully to an en- 
vironment, may, through sheer bad fortune, lose this 
power and go backward. It is important to remem- 
ber that the superiority or inferiority of any species or 
of any element of human civilization is only a superi- 
ority or inferiority with reference to a given environ- 
ment and that all environment is subject to constant 
change. 

It is a peculiarly paralyzing, narcotizing theory that 
teaches that mankind on the whole and in the long run 
necessarily goes forward. Pragmatism and Socialism 
point out, on the contrary, that, on the whole and in 
the long run, mankind has every opportunity to go for- 
ward, tut that the result depends largely, though within 



56 THE LARGER ASPECTS OF SOCIALISM 

limits, on mankind. If it is taught that society is fatally 
bound to progress, the people are not on the alert to dis- 
cover and remedy the constantly recurring cases of social 
reversion — or perhaps we should not say reversion since 
society may turn back along paths it never pursued be- 
fore. These popular biological terms nearly always con- 
tain more or less of logical error. 

As evidence against the fatality of progress, I may re- 
fer to Mrs. Gilman's excellent illustration of the inferi- 
ority in many respects, if not on the whole, of the life 
of our lowest class of laborers when compared with that 
of primitive tribes. It is commonly assumed that all so- 
ciety has now advanced beyond the primitive stages. 
Mrs. Gilman shows that while the larger part of society 
has so advanced a certain minority has probably actually 
gone backward after all these centuries — for it must be 
remembered that primitive people are now known to 
have been by no means savage, as was formerly sup- 
posed. The problem of judging the point these classes 
have actually reached to-day is a complicated one, but 
Mrs. Gilman's remarks certainly apply to many kinds of 
unskilled workers who may be called the menial servants 
of society. These classes show signs not of diminishing, 
but, on the contrary, of increasing in numbers. And 
lack of independence and of contact with nature prob- 
ably makes them less interesting and less representative 
specimens of the human race than any but the most 
primitive tribes. 

It is supposed that evolution teaches that the condi- 
tion which follows is usually better than that which went 
before, though none of the philosophers of evolution at 
the present time justify such a view as a general princi- 
ple. Retrogression, it is conceded, is always possible, 
and often takes place — but this fact is often forgotten. 

The partial justification of war, and. the apology 



EVOLUTIONISM AND AFTER 57 

for war before the period of civilization are only one 
side of this falsely evolutionary view. From the same 
standpoint, slavery, autocracy, and the rule of private 
property and of social classes are defended. H. G. 
Wells, for example, speaks for innumerable writers of 
the day when he says : "The world has needed Private 
Ownership," while Lester F. Ward declares that the 
world once needed slavery to discipline men and women 
to agriculture and habits of industry, just as it needed 
autocratic kings to weld warring tribes into nations and 
nations into empires, to build high roads, end private 
wars and establish the idea of law, and a wider than 
tribal loyalty." Dr. J. G. Frazer of the University of 
Liverpool even defends superstition from an "evolution- 
ary" standpoint: 

"Superstition has supplied multitudes with a motive, a 
wrong motive it is true, for right action; and surely it 
is better, far better for the world that men should do 
right from wrong motives than that they should do 
wrong with the best intentions. What concerns society 
is conduct, not opinion; if only our actions are just and 
good, it matters not a straw to others whether our opin- 
ions be mistaken. The danger of false opinion, and it 
is a most serious one, is that it commonly leads to wrong 
action; hence it is unquestionably a great evil and every 
effort should be made to correct it. But of the two evils 
wrong action is in itself infinitely worse than false opin- 
ion." (Psyche's Task.) 

Again this widely known anthropologist argues that 
although a body of false opinions is a most dangerous 
guide in practice, and the evils which it has wrought are 
incalculable, still "they ought not to blind us to the bene- 
fit which superstition has conveyed to society by furnish- 
ing the ignorant, the weak and foolish with a motive, 
bad though it be, for good conduct." Is it not perfectly 



58 THE LARGER ASPECTS OF SOCIALISM 

clear both to common sense and to philosophy that such 
an opinion totally destroys the balance of our judgment 
and leaves us floating in a sea of moral uncertainty and 
indifference ? What Frazer says merely amounts to this, 
that the evil may serve the good. But surely this does 
not change the nature of the evil. The question we 
ought to ask ourselves is not whether an absence of any 
opinion or any belief would have been better than super- 
stition, but whether a more accurate opinion and a deeper 
belief would not have been infinitely preferable. Super- 
stition is mental blindness, and as such makes the ex- 
ploitation of the blind easier by those who can see, and 
persuades people to close their, eyes altogether to truths 
of which they might otherwise have had glimpses. 

Frazer seems to recognize this truth, and defends su- 
perstition more frankly than other "evolutionists," just 
because it does place the destinies of the many in the 
hands of the few. He reminds us that among many peo- 
ples the task of government has been greatly facilitated 
by the superstition that the government belonged to a 
superior order of beings who possessed certain super- 
natural powers; so that in some countries, as in Mela- 
nesia, skepticism as to the prevailing superstition "tends 
to undermine the foundation of civil society." As if the 
undermining of a society that rested on such a basis 
would not in all probability lead ultimately to a better 
state! Speaking of the results in Melanesia, Frazer 
writes : 

"The first blow at the power of the chiefs was struck 
unconsciously by the missionaries. Neither they nor 
the chiefs themselves realized how closely the govern- 
ment of the Fijians was bound up with their religion. 
No sooner had a missionary gained a foothold in a 
chief's village than the taboo was doomed, and on the 
taboo depended half the people's reverence for rank. 



■AND AFTER 59 

The taboo died hard, as such institutions should do. 
Thus taboo became a powerful instrument for strength- 
ening the ties, perhaps our Socialist friends would say 
riveting the chains of private property. Indeed, some 
good authorities who were personally acquainted with 
the working of taboo in Polynesia have held that the 
system was originally devised for no other purpose." 
(See Chapter IX.) 

No "evolutionary" theory should lead us to justify 
historic institutions if they are against the broadest 
principles of social morality; for example, if they are 
against the very social instincts which we share with 
many animals. And if we are going to justify war and 
slavery, despotism and superstition, in the past, we can- 
not refuse also to justify the typical evils of the present 
— like class rule, for instance. And we find, indeed, that 
ever since the first application of the theory of evolution 
to human affairs by Herbert Spencer and others, it has 
been used as an apology for nearly all existing institu- 
tions. Spencer recognizes repeatedly that class govern- 
ment and class rule exist, as in his "Study of Sociology," 
and acknowledges that the mass of wage-earners are 
held in "extreme subordination," but he apologizes for 
this condition on the ground that "the existing type of 
industrial organization, like the existing type of political 
organization, is about as good as existing human nature 
allows," which is as much as to say that, if things must 
not remain exactly as they are, they cannot be much 
altered. Spencer admits that class rule can be legiti- 
mately defended only if under this system "the lives of 
the people are on the average made more satisfactory 
than they would otherwise be," by which he means to 
suggest that, if the condition of the mass is better now, 
under the system of class rule, than it was before that 
system came into being, then that settles the question. 



60 THE LARGER ASPECTS OF SOCIALISM 

He does not seem to consider that this improvement 
might have come about, not because of class rule, but 
in spite of it. 

Spencer has social democracy as an ultimate ideal, for 
he argues that "a decline of class power and a decrease 
of class distinction should be accompanied by improve- 
ment not only in the lives of the regulated classes, but 
in the lives of the regulating classes." This ideal is that 
of nearly all the social philosophers and Socialists of our 
time, but as far as one can observe, Spencer, like so 
many others, takes no account whatever of the question 
as to how much time may be required to reach this ideal. 
But the acceptance of the ideal means nothing for any 
practical purpose unless it gives us also a measure of 
the rate with which we are to approach it, and unless we 
are to reach it within a reasonable time. Merely to head 
the ship in the right direction means nothing unless 
there is enough power to move it faster than contrary 
wind and tide and to reach the destination within some 
specified period of time. 

Or perhaps we should say that Spencer does have 
a practical standard and a completely reactionary one. 
If he does not say that what is must be, he does say 
that what is at a given moment must be at that moment. 

"It is quite possible to hold," he writes, "that when, 
instead of devouring their captured enemies, men made 
slaves of them, the change was a step in advance; and 
to hold that this slavery, though absolutely bad, was rel- 
atively good — was the best thing practicable for the time 
being. It is quite possible also to hold that when slav- 
ery gave place to a serfdom under which certain per- 
sonal rights were recognized, the new arrangement, 
though in the abstract an inequitable one, was more equit- 
able than the old, and constituted as great an ameliora- 
tion as men's natures then permitted. It is quite possible 



6i 

to hold that when, instead of serfs, there came freemen 
working for wages, but held as a class in extreme sub- 
ordination, this modified relation of employers and em- 
ployed, though bad, was as good a one as could then 
be established." 

Another conception of evolution, as common as this 
optimistic fatalism, is that evolution must necessarily be 
very slow. The example of the evolution of the past or 
of the lower kinds of life (already mentioned) has had 
a very large influence in establishing this view, but it is 
also due in part to the necessary study by every evolu- 
tionist of all the steps and stages of development. It 
is true that no essential stage can be overleaped, but 
the stages often follow one another so rapidly that the 
term revolution is more applicable than evolution, while 
the acceleration is often so great that the influence of 
recent stages quite overshadows that of stages that went 
before. It is useless to argue the point of fact, for evo- 
lutionists have now generally accepted it, notably in the 
case of the De Vries mutations in biology and also in 
numerous other instances. Because stages of develop- 
ment must take place in due order, it is supposed that 
they were more or less mechanical and equal, like the 
tickings of a clock — which only means that people are 
still thinking in the terms of mechanics rather than in 
the terms either of animal or human life. 

Though the most eminent observers nearly all ac- 
knowledge that its doom is sealed, this conception still 
predominates in the scientific world, and is almost uni- 
versal in public discussions. Spencer, for instance, sup- 
poses that it will be a tremendously long period before 
we shall have attained a federation of the nations that 
will put an end to war, and suggests a long series of cen- 
turies or perhaps millenniums. But if we realize that 
Spencer calculates on the basis of the time that has been 



62 THE LARGER ASPECTS OF SOCIALISM 

required for revolutionary changes in semi-civilized so- 
ciety we need not be particularly influenced by his opin- 
ion, and we may even have good and practical grounds 
for hoping that revolutionary progress in the direction 
of peace will be made within a single generation. If we 
turn out to be right then Spencer will prove to have ex- 
aggerated by ten or a hundred fold. 

No one has based his sociology more definitely or 
more exclusively on the enormous periods required for 
biological changes than John Morley : 

"The great changes of history took up long periods 
of time," wrote Morley in 1877, "which, when meas- 
ured by the little life of a man, are almost colossal, like 
the vast changes of geology. We know how long it takes 
before a species of plant or animal disappears in face of a 
better adapted species. Ideas and customs, beliefs and 
institutions, have always lingered just as long in face 
of their successors. . . . History, like geology, demands 
the use of the imagination, and in proportion as the exer- 
cise of the historic imagination is vigorously performed 
in thinking of the past, will be the breadth of our concep- 
tion of the changes which the future has in store for us, 
as well as of the length of time and the magnitude of 
effort required for their perfect achievement." 

I do not recall a more profoundly pessimistic, illogical 
and reactionary social theory. The vast changes of 
geology have usually taken millions or at least tens of 
thousands of years. Not one of the social changes of 
history of which we are aware has absorbed any such 
period. The inventions of gunpowder and printing have 
thoroughly revolutionized the world in five centuries. 
Steam and electricity have accomplished a revolution 
still more profound in a single century. To magnify so 
preposterously the length of time required for great 



"EVOLUTIONISM" AND AFTER 63 

social changes is just exactly as reactionary, for every 
practical purpose, as to declare that these changes can- 
not be made at all and ought not to be attempted. 

Morley undoubtedly represents the prevailing view. 
That of America is expressed by Roosevelt in the name 
of the great middle section of the nation, by Carnegie for 
a more conservative, and by Arthur Brisbane for a more 
radical element. In his essay on "The Two Americas" 
Roosevelt speaks of "problems which under Protean 
shapes are yet fundamentally the same for all nations 
and all times," while in another passage he gives as his 
ground for supposing that the word "country" will con- 
tinue to mean a great deal for two or three thousand 
years the fact that it has meant a great deal for two 
or three thousand years past. This language reminds us 
strongly of the prediction made by Burke over a cen- 
tury ago, that "England will ever preserve an estab- 
lished church, an established monarchy, an established 
aristocracy, and an established democracy, each in the 
degree to which it exists, and no greater." Burke's de- 
nial of social evolution, made absurd by recent events 
in England, though more nearly applicable there than in 
other countries, was unconditional and absolute. Though 
Roosevelt does not deny social evolution absolutely, he 
restricts it to a limited field, and denies that even in 
that restricted area it is likely to be any more rapid in 
the future than it has been in the past, entirely ignoring 
the accelerating and cumulative influence of civilization 
and progress. A further reading of the passage quoted 
moreover, will show that Roosevelt believes that the 
field of human activity where problems remain funda- 
mentally the same is far more important than the field 
where social evolution applies. 

In his skepticism concerning the human kind of evo- 
lution Carnegie, like innumerable other public men, occu- 



64 THE LARGER ASPECTS OF SOCIALISM 

pies almost the same ground as that taken by Roosevelt. 
He suggests that it has taken us not two or three thou- 
sand years, but "hundreds of thousands of years" to 
arrive where we are, and scoffs at the idea that society 
can be fundamentally altered, since human nature is not 
likely to change for "countless ages to come." Not. only 
is Carnegie embarrassed to find expressions strong 
enough to state his confidence in the extreme slowness 
of progress, but he finds that under present conditions 
we are already steadily approaching the ultimate ideal, 
and suggests very clearly that, as there is no hope of 
very greatly accelerating this pace, so also there is no 
particular reason why we should desire to do so. 

Even more astounding, we find practically the same 
view shared by the most popular of American editors, 
often regarded not only as a radical democrat, but as a 
Socialist. In the New York Journal, of which Arthur 
Brisbane is editor, one naturally finds even stronger ex- 
pressions than those used by Carnegie. After stating 
"that men will see on earth a race freed from anxiety 
and poverty," far from sharing the optimistic belief 
of the Chancellor of England, David Lloyd George, that 
we may go very far toward accomplishing this in our 
own generation, the writer says : "Fortunately there is 
plenty of time ahead of us. Men have been here a hun- 
dred thousand years at most. It is quite certain that the 
sun's light and heat and the present temperature of this 
planet, barring celestial collision, will endure for several 
millions of years at least." 

It is scarcely possible that this eminent journalist 
meant definitely that the achievement of the cure of pov- 
erty would take such aeons, but his statement, "that there 
is plenty of time ahead of us," is quite as unfortunate 
and reactionary in its necessary logical application as the 
ones previously quoted. If progress is to have any defi- 



"EVOLUTIONISM" AND AFTER 65 

nite meaning at all, it can neither imply a movement 
indefinitely fast nor a movement indefinitely slow. The 
mere assumption that there is evolution without con- 
sideration of the rate of evolution should interest no 
reasoning or practical human being. 

The English publicist, John A. Hobson, has pointed 
out how this idea of an indefinitely slow evolution has 
long been the rallying ground of reaction in England : 

"Large synthetic schemes of thought and action were 
renounced as wildly, waste fully speculative: evolution 
was the new watchword, and its substitution for revolu- 
tion meant the assertion, as a primary doctrine of gen- 
eral application, that progress must be slow. This doc- 
trine was derived from scientific records in fields of in- 
quiry where the ordered consciousness of man played no 
part ; but once 'discovered' it was applied with easy con- 
fidence to human history." 3 

I have referred at the beginning of this chapter to 
the tendency of the evolutionists toward a sort of optim- 
istic fatalism. Each step in human evolution is prac- 
tically, though not always avowedly, defended, on the 
ground that it was superior to the step that went before, 
though it is rarely condemned on the ground that it was 
inferior to the step that came after — as intellectual hon- 
esty would require. In speaking of the Socialist ethics, 
I shall show how such an attitude means the complete 
reversal of the ethical standpoint. I want now to show 
the reader how this attitude is perfectly obviously based 
on a moral judgment, though claiming to rest on a con- 
ception of evolution as being non-moral. On the ground 
that moral judgments, i. e., approval or disapproval, 
are out of place in speaking of evolution, Spencer apolo- 
gizes at times even for the evils he most detests, such 
as militarism, slavery, but he makes one exception. He 



66 THE LARGER ASPECTS OF SOCIALISM 

is conscious that all societies in the past, since primitive 
times, have been governed by the rule of one or another 
social class which has usually legislated in such a way as 
to preserve "private interests" from injury whether 
"public interests" were injured or not. The period of 
capitalism and free competition, according to Spencer, 
is already putting an end to this class rule as fast as 
could be expected, but his moral judgment of disap- 
proval at least remains applicable to the past. He admits 
that class rule, one of the essential features of all his- 
tory up to the period in which he was writing, is evil. 

How do logicians like Spencer and other "evolution- 
ists" reconcile this shifting back and forth from a moral 
to a non-moral view ? It is clear that, being men like the 
rest of us, they call non-moral the phases of evolution 
they wish to defend, and moral those phases they wish 
to criticize. But intellectual people always invent, con- 
sciously or unconsciously, some logical device to explain 
their inconsistencies. What is the device by which 
Spencer and the "evolutionists" deceive either them- 
selves or others? It consists simply in the relative 
length of the period of the generalization they choose for 
discussion and of the period they choose to consider as 
containing it. If the generalization refers to all the past 
right up to the present, then we have not really a 
series of evolutionary steps, but only one step, and it 
seems logical, as I shall show, to approve or disapprove, 
that is to apply a moral judgment. So Spencer's "mili- 
tarism" and "class rule" are supposed to be attributes of 
all the past of civilization. As civilization is the larger 
containing period chosen for discussion (for the con- 
scious or unconscious purposes of the evolutionist), and 
there was no stage, in civilization, before militarism and 
class rule then, as far as these particular phases of civi- 
lization are concerned, it is impossible to ask the evolu- 



"EVOLUTIONISM" AND AFTER 67 

tionist to apply his usual optimistic fatalism or to say 
that militarism and class rule were relatively good be- 
cause they followed something worse (e. g., cannibalism 
and chaos — which came before civilization). And as 
the stage after militarism and class rule has not yet ar- 
rived and is the obvious object of our moral striving, it 
is impossible to ask him to apply to the present the ex- 
alted non-moral attitude that regards every stage of evo- 
lution as fitted to its time. 

When, on the other hand, an "evolutionist" wishes to 
defend an institution or tendency, he only has to define 
it narrowly, so that there is a stage after, and a stage 
before. Slavery, for example, if very broadly defined 
(e. g., including slavery to a pater familias and to soci- 
ety), may be said to have existed as long as there were 
men and still to exist to-day; and, so defined, we can 
condemn it in all its forms, including chattel slavery,, just 
as we condemn militarism or class rule. But Spencer 
wishes to defend chattel slavery, i. e., historically. So 
he chooses to discuss a particular phase of slavery 
and says that chattel slavery was better than the murder 
of captives that was the stage preceding it, is not to be 
morally condemned for the time when it existed, and is 
only relatively bad when compared with the stage that 
followed, the wage system. 

Spencer also recognized that evolution might take 
place at a tremendous rate of speed. He realized that 
the "vast transformation" brought about by railways 
and telegraphs called for a completely new view of poli- 
tics, that it amounted to a social revolution. 

"Within a generation," he wrote, "the social organ- 
ism has passed from a stage like that of a cold-blooded 
creature with feeble circulation and rudimentary nerves, 
to a stage like that of a w r arm-blooded creature with effi- 
cient vascular system and a developed nervous apparatus. 



68 THE LARGER ASPECTS OF SOCIALISM 

To this more than to any other cause are due the great 
changes in habits, beliefs, and sentiments, characterizing 
our generation." 4 

Why he should have denied that we might expect a 
similar revolution to-day is difficult to see. Spencer re- 
marks that the industrial revolution he spoke of had 
been accompanied by a counter-revolutionary effect, be- 
cause it had further centralized the social structure in 
such a way as to increase the danger of militarism. But 
this means only that the last industrial revolution hap- 
pened to have a reactionary effect. May not other social 
revolutions be expected, according to Spencer's own 
logic, to work entirely in the progressive direction? 

Present-day sociologists also, including both advo- 
cates and opponents of Spencer's individualism, take 
similar views on evolution. Lester F. Ward, for in- 
stance, considers that slavery was indispensable for hu- 
man progress, and, since all countries of to-day have 
parties of reaction or order as well as parties of pro- 
gress, he concludes that those who oppose progress help 
it just as much as do those who favor it. 

No one has better exposed the reactionary nature of 
the larger part of the philosophy that bears the name of 
evolution to-day than Henry George. His bitter contro- 
versy with Spencer perhaps led him to see more clearly 
than his contemporaries. His objection to the theory of 
the struggle for existence is chiefly that it leads to the 
optimistic fatalism of which I have spoken. That is to 
say, he criticizes this theory especially because it estab- 
lished a foundation for the larger "evolutionary" theory. 

"The practical outcome of this theory is in a sort of 
hopeful fatalism, of which current literature is full. In 
this view, progress is the result of forces which work 
slowly, steadily, and remorselessly, for the. elevation of 



-AND AFTER 69 

man. War, slavery, tyranny, superstition, famine, and 
pestilence, the want and misery which fester in modern 
civilization, are the impelling causes which drive man 
on, by eliminating poorer types and extending the higher ; 
and hereditary transmission is the power by which ad- 
vances are fixed, and past advances made the footing for 
new advances. The individual is the result of changes 
thus impressed upon and perpetuated through a long 
series of past individuals, and the social organization 
takes its form from the individuals of which it is com- 
posed. Thus, while this theory is, as Herbert Spencer 
says — 'radical to a degree beyond anything which cur- 
rent radicalism conceives' ; inasmuch as it looks for 
changes in the very nature of man ; it is at the same time 
'conservative to a degree beyond anything conceived by 
current conservatism,' inasmuch as it holds that no 
change can avail save these slow changes in men's na- 
tures. Philosophers may teach that this does not lessen 
the duty of endeavoring to reform abuses, just as the 
theologians who taught predestinarianism insisted on 
the duty of all to struggle for salvation; but, as generally 
apprehended, the result is fatalism — 'do what we may, 
the mills of the gods grind on regardless either of our 
aid or our hindrance.' " 5 

To be sure, George rejects the evolutionary theory to 
return to the earlier and still more objectionable theory 
of the rise and fall of civilizations, the swinging back and 
forward of the pendulum of progress. But at least his 
aversion to the fatal progress implied by the evolutionary 
theory in its usual interpretation is unqualified; at least, 
he finds no historical apology even, for war and slavery. 

"In that spirit of fatalism to which I have alluded 
as pervading current literature, it is the fashion to speak 
even of war and slavery as means of human progress. 
But war, which is the opposite of association, can aid 
progress only when it prevents further war or breaks 



JO THE LARGER ASPECTS OF SOCIALISM 

down anti-social barriers, which are themselves passive 
war. 

"As for slavery, I cannot see how it could ever have 
aided in establishing freedom, and freedom, the syno- 
nym of equality, is, from the very rudest state in which 
man can be imagined, the stimulus and condition of prog- 
ress. Auguste Comte's idea that the institution of slav- 
ery destroyed cannibalism is as fanciful as Elia's hu- 
morous notion of the way mankind acquired a taste for 
roast pig. It assumes that a propensity that has never 
been found developed in man save as the result of the 
most unnatural conditions — the direst want or the most 
brutalizing superstitions — is an original impulse, and 
that he, even in his lowest state the highest of all ani- 
mals, has natural appetites which the nobler brutes do not 
show. And so of the idea that slavery began civiliza- 
tion by giving slave owners leisure for improvement. 

"Slavery never did and never could aid improvement. 
Whether the community consist of a single master and 
a single slave, or of thousands of masters and millions 
of slaves, slavery necessarily involves a waste of human 
power; for not only is slave labor less productive than 
free labor, but the power of masters is likewise wasted 
in holding and watching their slaves, and is called away 
from directions in which real improvement lies. From 
first to last, slavery, like every other denial of the natural 
equality of men, has hampered and prevented progress. 
Just in proportion as slavery plays an important part in 
the social organization does improvement cease. That 
in the classical world slavery was so universal is un- 
doubtedly the reason why the mental activity which so 
polished literature and refined art never hit on any of the 
great discoveries and inventions which distinguish mod- 
ern civilization. No slave-holding people ever were an 
inventive people. In a slave-holding community the 
upper classes may become luxurious and polished; but 
never inventive. Whatever degrades the laborer and 
robs him of the fruits of his toil stifles the spirit of in- 



EVOLUTIONISM AND AFTER 7 1 

vention and forbids the utilization of inventions and dis- 
coveries even when made." (My italics.) 6 

In a word attention is centered not on the fact that 
war, slavery or feudalism, respectively, was in each case 
worse than the condition that followed, but that each 
was better than the condition that preceded. Indeed, this 
retrospective attitude of mind is considered to be the 
very essence of the "evolutionary" view. It would seem 
that it is only scientific to place ourselves at some given 
point of history and to look backward, and that to place 
ourselves at the same point and look forward is the es- 
sence of error. Apparently it seems it would not be just 
to a people to judge them in the light of their future; we 
must judge them in the light of their past. By this 
retrospective method we practically surrender the im- 
measurable advantage we have over previous genera- 
tions in knowing the events that followed them, and 
make use only of what we consider to be our superior 
wisdom arising out of our superior knowledge of the 
events that preceded them. Roused by their ignorance 
of history and evolution, which is undeniable, we 
scarcely attach any importance to their lack of a stable 
society, or the material means supplied by modern sci- 
ence and popular education. Pragmatists, on the con- 
trary, would attach comparatively little importance to 
our ancestors' ignorance of their own history, often find- 
ing that they had a remarkable instinctive grasp of their 
times and those that immediately preceded them; cer- 
tainly the wiser of them knew much of their own lives 
of which we are ignorant. Socialists would say that the 
slowness of development and the attendant evils of any 
age were due primarily, not to its lack of wisdom, 
or of our history, but to its lack of our civilization. 

Stirner has pointed out that many evolutionists are 



J2 THE LARGER ASPECTS OF SOCIALISM 

just as absolute and dogmatic as other absolutists 
or dogmatists. Evolution as ordinarily conceived may 
view an institution or a system of ideas as rel- 
ative — to be sure — but as relative only to the period 
in which it arises. That is, the evolutionary theory 
may be relative only as to time — and absolute in 
every other respect. Stirner says to such evolu- 
tionists : "You believe you have gone to the farthest 
length when you boldly affirm that there is no 'absolute 
truth,' because each time has its own truth. But with 
this you leave to each time its truth, and you really 
create a regular 'absolute truth,' a truth which no time is 
without, because every time, whatever its truth may be, 
still has a 'truth.' " 7 We have here the philosophic basis 
that necessarily leads mere evolutionists to shipwreck, 
unless their view of history finds some more definite 
hypothetical bottom. For everything that has been must' 
be judged not only in connection with the period in 
which it existed, but must also be measured by numer- 
ous other standards — which standards can only be dis- 
covered as mankind evolves. That is, institutions and 
human beings must be judged undoubtedly by the time 
in which they appear, but they must also be judged ac- 
cording to the most discriminating standards of the 
judge's period : not even an "evolutionary" interpreta- 
tion of history can hope to stand the test of time. 



IV 

THE REIGN OF BIOLOGY 

For the last two generations the theory of "the sur- 
vival of the fittest" has played an even more important 
part in our thinking than the theory of evolution. Im- 
plying as it does that a very large part if not all of 
progress takes place through struggle, and through the 
defeat of the weak as much as through the victory of 
the strong, it is used almost as often as "evolutionism" 
to support reactionary ideas and proposals. Arguments 
drawn from biology have been employed in the words 
of John A. Hobson : 

(i). "To defend the necessity and social utility of 
individual competition in industry," 

(2). "To prove the advantage of racial competition 
in war," 

. (3). "The deep-rooted divergence of species, the 
strong dominion of heredity, the practical importance of 
chance individual variations as means of progress, are 
made to nourish theories or permanent racial and class 
ascendency based on superiority and of individual ge- 
nius and effort as the sole instruments of industrial bet- 
terment." 

(4). "But the most impudent abuse of biology con- 
sists in the assumption . . . that animal evolution con- 
stitutes the whole essence of social evolution," (the as- 
sumption of many of the supporters of "Eugenics"). 1 

73 



74 THE LARGER ASPECTS OF SOCIALISM 

I have noted that competition, war, racial and class 
ascendency have all been supported by a perversion of 
the evolution theory itself, without drawing on the so- 
called biological "law" of the "survival of the fittest/' 

The "survival of the fittest" cult has now passed its 
highest point, and is on its decline. Not because its ad- 
herents have been converted to any broader, deeper, and 
more human view, but because they have found new and 
more serviceable biological dogmas. The same circles 
that formerly based all their thinking on the relation of 
man to the animals are now giving themselves over with 
the same confident enthusiasm to the cult of man as an 
animal, to the revival of tribal feeling for family and 
race, to a new form of ancestor worship, and an attempt 
to resurrect those ideas about superior and inferior 
blood on which all aristocracies have been built, from 
the caste system of India to the Absolutisms of the 
Eighteenth Century, ideas against which the whole of 
our civilization is one long reaction. 

As the era of commercial competition and of inter- 
national and race wars draws to a close, and the era of 
"State Socialism" begins, the "struggle for existence" 
theory in biology, which owed its influence almost wholly 
to these social forms, passes gradually into the back- 
ground. It arose when capitalism in England was just 
beginning to replace the squirearchy, reached its height 
when competition was in its glory, and is passing into 
a rapid decline with the coming of the trusts, interna- 
tional financial combinations, and government owner- 
ship. As the "State Socialists," who are the political ex- 
pression of the new situation, pretend to consider society 
as an organic whole, the analogy of biological organ- 
isms, though the sociologists long ago exposed its falla- 
cies, is again coming to the front. And, as they are 
actually building up a society of hereditary classes or 



THE REIGN OF BIOLOGY 75 

castes, the theory of inherited family and racial superi- 
ority is also being dug up from its ancient burying 
grounds — though of course it is presented to the world 
as a new discovery. As always social theories are merely 
after-thoughts justifying existing social facts. 

The new idealization of the animal in man is even 
more reactionary in its effect than the idealization of 
man's past by "evolutionism," because all religions and 
philosophies from the dawn of civilization, no matter 
how retrogressive in other respects, have at least had 
the virtue of recognizing the gulf between man and the 
animals. To forget this again strongly suggests a re- 
version to the animal and devil worship of the savages. 

The assumption that mankind is to be studied chiefly 
in his animal aspect is the extreme of the biological 
tendency ; its usual form consists rather in an attempt to 
reason about men along parallel lines to our reasoning 
about animals, or as a continuation of the latter, after 
adding one or two new premises. It is assumed, not that 
man is actually governed by the laws that govern the 
animal, but rather that common laws rule both. J. R. 
MacDonald, for example (representing the "Socialism" 
of the British trade unionists), writes that "the laws 
governing the existence and growth of human Society 
could not be understood until biological science was suf- 
ficiently far advanced to explain with tolerable fullness 
of detail the laws which regulate life and its evolution," 
and again that "an accurate view of the meaning and 
the method of social progress could not precede the suc- 
cess of biology in explaining the meaning and method 
of organic evolution." 2 We see here the unmistakable 
and oft-repeated assumption that the laws of biology 
serve as the indispensable and even the chief basis for 
sociology. This is more than a mere biological analogy. 
It is held, not that the structure of society has developed 



j6 THE LARGER ASPECTS OF SOCIALISM 

similarly to the organic structure of animals, but that 
humanity has developed exclusively out of the animal. 
In the biological analogy the individual man becomes 
dwarfed by being compared to a cell. In this view the 
individual man is not compared to a cell, but it is said 
that trie cell and the individual man are held as a matter 
of fact to be governed by the same laws. It is evident 
that such a theory is more dangerous to individual lib- 
erty than any that could be propounded, and indeed it 
has already given origin to the most extreme form of 
authoritarian "State Socialism." This "ultra-organic" 
theory is an example of the misuse of biology, but it in- 
terests us even more as one of the bases of the most re- 
actionary social theory of our times. (See Chapter 

vi.) 

The leading sociologists deny the applicability of bio- 
logical generalizations to social evolution. But the mis- 
use of biology has gone so far that even biologists are 
beginning to protest. Prof. J. Arthur Thomson, in his 
"Heredity," feels it his duty to denounce the "material- 
ism of pretending that sociology is merely a higher de- 
partment of biology, and a human societary group no 
more than a crowd of mammals." When we pass from 
organism to human society, Thomson warns us that "the 
whole venue changes so much that we have to be very 
careful in our application of biological formulae." The 
natural feeling of the biologist or any other scientist is 
in favor of applying his science as broadly as possible, 
so that Thomson's warning has a peculiar force. It 
means that misapplication of some of the most ques- 
tioned of biological hypotheses to . the whole field of 
human thinking has gone to such absurd lengths that 
biologists are beginning to fear that their own science 
will be discredited. 

If there is a biological principle which doifnnates hu- 



THE REIGN OF BIOLOGY J*J 

manity and society, it is neither the similarity of the 
evolution of men to that of animals, as we have been 
taught, nor the supreme importance of the merely ani- 
mal side of man's nature as taught by this new doctrine, 
but the fact that humanity is held together and progress 
brought about not only by the formation of communi- 
ties of neighbors, but by the blood relationship of men 
and our common racial origin and destiny. There was 
a time when this blood relationship was the sole basis of 
societies; and it still holds the family together, though 
we have forgotten the unity of the tribe. 

H. G. Wells calculates that forty generations, or a 
little more than ten or twelve centuries ago, we had 
nearly two billion ancestors! Of course among these 
ancestors many must have given us their blood a hun- 
dred or even a thousand times, but it is still probable 
that most of us had millions of ancestors at that time. It 
is certain that all the races of Europe have been tremen- 
dously intermingled within the last two thousand years, 
and there is endless evidence that even the people of 
Europe, Asia and Africa were closely related not many 
millenniums ago : "A time will come in less than fifty 
generations when all the population of the world will 
have my blood and I and my worst enemy will not be 
able to say which child is his or mine." 3 Wells calcu- 
lates that a hundred generations ago everyone living 
who had descendants at all is probably among the an- 
cestors of all of us. Anthropological evidence would 
suggest that this is probably true if we take a some- 
what longer period than Wells chooses. 

But even this theory of race solidarity, true and mo- 
mentously important as it is when kept within its proper 
limits, becomes retrogressive as soon as it is made a 
dogma. And those who set up biological "laws" to rule 
over us have not failed to seize also on this beneficent 



j8 THE LARGER ASPECTS OF SOCIALISM 

principle and to pervert the great truth it contains. There 
is an ambiguity in the expression, "the evolution of the 
race." If it means the development of humanity, then 
we may well agree that consciously or unconsciously to 
further this evolution must be the purpose of all our 
striving. But the term "race" is being used more and 
more in its biological sense, so that the expression usu- 
ally now means the physiological evolution of the race. 
And this is infinitely less important for all present hu- 
man purposes, because it is so much slower, than the 
kind of human evolution that goes on exclusive of any 
physiological advance (other than a leveling up to the 
best existing human types), namely, the evolution and 
spread of civilization. 

"The welfare of the race" may, indeed, become an 
even more popular and more plausible phrase with which 
to crush individual liberty than the "welfare of society" 
(see Chapter VI). And Wells is one of those who is 
most guilty of this abuse. For, after rejecting the theo- 
cratic biology of "individualism," he passes directly over 
to a theocratic biology of "State Socialism." If we 
need not take our "laws" from the struggles of all spe- 
cies, he contends, we must take them from the solidarity 
of our species, and urges Socialism as a "synthesis of 
the will and thought of the species." 

"It is not the individual that reproduces himself," he 
says, "it is the species that reproduces through the indi- 
vidual and often in spite of his characteristics. The 
race flows through us, the race is the drama and we are 
the incidents. This is not any sort of poetical statement ; 
it is a statement of fact. In so far as we are individuals, 
so far as to seek to follow merely individual ends, we 
are accidental, disconnected, without significance, the 
sport of chance. The great things of my life, love, faith, 
the intimation of beauty, the things most savoring of im- 



THE REIGN OF BIOLOGY 79 

mortality, are the things most general, the things most 
shared, and least distinctively me." 4 



Even more reactionary than the Eugenist's tendency 
to look at the human race as merely animal, or the 
"State Socialist" tendency to over-emphasize racial soli- 
darity as represented by Wells, is the opposite effort to 
revive theories of fundamental race differences and of 
the inherited superiority and inferiority of classes and 
individuals. It is actually sought to make such theories 
the basis of society, and there can be no doubt that much 
of the continued exploitation and persecution of one race 
by another and that revival of aristocracy and con- 
scious attempt to build up new castes, which is to be 
noted in all modern countries, have been considerably in- 
tensified by this perversion of science. 

After the essential oneness of the human race, the 
brotherhood of man, the greatest truth that biology has 
to teach mankind is unquestionably the preponderating 
influence of environment on the evolution of humanity 
and its various types — and both these truths are forgotten 
by this new theory of reaction. Humanity long ago be- 
gan to conquer its environment, and it is this conquest 
which has done most, not only for the development of 
civilization, but for the actual physiological development 
of man. If the races of Europe, Asia, and Africa 
seem to have been closely connected in the past, there 
are great divergencies to-day. But it would seem that 
these divergencies are, beyond doubt, due to environ- 
ment — and that enormous changes have been brought 
about within a few millenniums, perhaps even since primi- 
tive culture and the semi-civilized stages of society. And 
since civilization produces similar changes far more rap- 
idly still, we may actually expect to see humanity con- 
siderably altered physiologically within comparatively 



SO THE LARGER ASPECTS OF SOCIALISM 

few generations. There has already been noted by Pro- 
fessor Frederick Starr and others the tendency to de- 
velop an American type, which cannot be accounted for 
merely by the mixture of races. More recently Professor 
Franz Boas of Columbia University has made an investi- 
gation of the Sicilians, European Jews, Bohemians, 
Hungarians, and Scotch among our recent immigrants. 
This report shows that where the change of environ- 
ment, especially that due to better food, is sudden and 
great, sudden change takes place in the physiological 
measurements, and therefore no doubt in the psychic 
character of these races, within a single generation. 

This epoch-making report of Boas shows that even 
children born within a few years after arrival of their 
parents in this country differ essentially from their 
progenitors. The environment would seem to have its 
greatest effect immediately before and immediately after 
birth — and it cannot be supposed that the new life of the 
parents before this time has had very much effect on the 
result. It is especially the shape of the head, supposed 
to be one of the most reliable and slowly changing fea- 
tures of race, which undergoes the most remarkable 
transformation. The children born in America of the 
long-headed Sicilians and of the round-headed East Eu- 
ropean Hebrews have very nearly the same head form — 
which is of course an intermediate one. The children 
of the long-headed Sicilians are more round-headed and 
the children of the round-headed Hebrews are longer- 
headed than their parents. Similar changes are traced 
in the development of the face. Nor is the life of the 
parent entirely without influence, for these changes in- 
crease, if only slightly, when the parents have been in 
this country many years. 

"Evolutionary" or historical biology, which is neces- 
sarily full of pure speculation concerning the* causes of 



THE REIGN OF BIOLOGY 8l 

what has been, is not only the common origin of all 
these reactionary social dogmas, but its popularity has 
at the same time been the chief obstacle to the develop- 
ment of that constructive, creative, and pragmatic biol- 
ogy to which the future of the science and no small part 
of the destiny of humanity belong. Historical biology is 
necessarily metaphysical and sterile in both fields, be- 
cause everything that makes no practical difference to us 
is bound to become metaphysical. 

But the whole significance of the appearance of man- 
kind on earth lies precisely in this — that we are in a 
position to revolutionize environment. The new biology 
asks that we should observe the dead past less and give 
our energies to improving life by improving environ- 
ment. Instead of mere observation, we must give our 
chief energies to experiment. What can be done by man 
will doubtless prove a million fold more marvelous than 
what has been done by nature. And even if this were 
not so it is infinitely more man's function to do what he 
can to improve nature than merely to study what nature 
has done. 

The duty of man is not to study how evolution cre- 
ates, but to create evolution. Let us occupy ourselves 
with genuine biology and relegate the antiquated natu- 
ral history to the background. The methods of man are 
already superior to those of nature and promise to excel 
them soon at every point. According to Darwin him- 
self, nature does all possible experiments as long as pos- 
sible, that is, until that species is extinct. But every ex- 
periment uses up vital energy and raw material, so that 
man limits his experiments to the minimum of crucial 
tests. These crucial tests are chosen to prove or dis- 
prove the practicability of certain definite purposes man 
wishes to accomplish. Instead of being governed by the 
laws of chance, like Darwin's fortuitous variations, most 



82 THE LARGER ASPECTS OF SOCIALISM 

scientific experiments reduce the element of chance to the 
minimum. Men may make in a single year ten thousand 
times as many crucial tests as Nature blunders upon in 
ten thousand years. 

Judged by human standards, nature is often almost 
insane; for if we apply the word insane to animals we 
may apply the same word to nature. If there is such 
a force as "evolution," if nature really accomplishes any- 
thing, she does so only with infinite waste and infinite 
error. It is common to say that science neither praises 
nor criticizes nature. But this claim is scarcely ever 
lived up to. Natural scientists nearly all agree that na- 
ture is wonderful. We have an equal right to say, for 
the purpose of illustrating our thought, that nature 
is insane. It is true that she sometimes accomplishes her 
results by methods that are beyond the reach of the 
most constructive imagination. But she also commits er- 
rors of such a magnitude that the human mind can 
hardly force itself to dwell upon them, blunders beyond 
the reach of the most pessimistic imagination. Accord- 
ing to Darwin's leading thought, nature was neither pro- 
gressive nor insane, but rather infinite in every direction, 
infinite in the variety of her method and also infinite in 
her waste and failure. She was infinitely powerful, but 
blind. But nature has not been merely blind. She 
should be regarded rather as having been either stupid 
or weak. Instead of having had an infinitely varied his- 
tory, life on earth should be held, for human purposes, 
as having been forced to proceed along the lines of an 
obstinately fixed and narrow environment. 

The chief method of nature, adaptation to environ- 
ment, is purely mechanical. The method of man is to 
surmount the difficulties due to immediate environment 
by putting himself, or the life upon which he is operat- 
ing into a larger environment, This larger environment 



THE REIGN OF BIOLOGY 83 

we may obtain either by using forces from afar or by 
differentiating forces that are immediately around us; 
we may either use the rays that come to us from the sun, 
or we may work through chemical or bacteriological 
means. In either case we are not adapting ourselves to 
the environment, but escaping it. In a word, there is no 
better way to define the methods of present-day science 
than to say that they are diametrically opposite to those 
of natural evolution. Not only do we differ from scien- 
tists of Darwin's and the succeeding generation in our 
attitude toward nature, but we are proceeding in dia- 
metrically the opposite direction. But throughout the 
whole field of science the conservative and reactionary 
individuals and classes will continue to emphasize that 
evolution which nature has accomplished in the past, 
while all progressive and revolutionary classes and indi- 
viduals will more and more center their thought around 
the evolution man can bring about in the future. 

What Darwin tried to do was to set up a new author- 
ity over man, rather than to give man a new power. His 
motives for doing this are entirely comprehensible, and 
his views "survived" because they were serviceable to a 
competitive society. Moreover, aside from his invalu- 
able and revolutionary work in accumulating data, and 
popularizing it, his life was particularly given over to 
an equally invaluable and revolutionary war against su- 
perstition. If, like Luther, he found that the easiest 
means to fight the old authority was to set up a new 
authority in its place, his achievement in overthrowing 
the older theocracy was nevertheless so great that we are 
almost inclined to forget the means he used to accom- 
plish this purpose. But the time arrived long ago for us 
to reject the new authority just as positively as he did 
the old. 

None of the new sciences have so enriched and deep- 



84 THE LARGER ASPECTS OF SOCIALISM 

ened modern thinking as biology. But if its results be 
taken in a dogmatic spirit instead of pragmatically, they 
will do more harm than good. By bridging to some de- 
gree the supposed gulf between men and animals, the 
biological method of thinking largely overcame the the- 
oretical opposition between mind and matter, as well as 
the mechanical habits of thinking bequeathed to us by 
the physical science of Galileo, Kepler, and Newton and 
the philosophies erected upon this science. It is almost 
impossible to state in words what a complete revolution 
in all our thinking this means. When this revolution is 
completed, it will make obsolete all the philosophers and 
thinkers that preceded Darwin. For the prominence of 
biology and of evolutionary or post-evolutionary con- 
ceptions has made us see that the theory of evolution 
itself, and even philosophy, must evolve as soon as they 
begin to base themselves on scientific hypotheses. HofT- 
ding says of Darwin : 

"He has shown us forces and tendencies in nature 
which make absolute systems impossible, at the same 
time that they give us new objects and problems. There 
is still a place for what Lessing called 'the unceasing 
striving after truth,' while 'absolute truth' (in the sense 
of a closed system) is unattainable so long as life and 
experience are going on." 5 

And, above all, biology has given us entirely new tools 
of thought. Here lies its greatest service and its great- 
est danger. The individual and environment habit 
of thought has been so useful, and is so widely applied, 
that we no longer subject it to criticism. We forget that 
we are, after all, using an analogy, though in this case 
it is a purely logical and not a concrete one — like those 
above mentioned. The terms "function" and "organ" 
in such common use are also employed without criticism 



THE REIGN OF BIOLOGY 85 

either as to their general validity or their biological 
meaning. For even in biology the term ''effective en- 
vironment" has come into general use and indicates the 
fact that the evolution of the environment is just as im- 
portant as the evolution of the organism itself. It is 
realized that the basic reality should not be viewed as 
being on the one side the changing organism, and on 
the other side a fixed environment, but "the-ani- 
mal-functioning-in-its-environments." Anthropologists, 
psychologists, and other modern evolutionists are begin- 
ning to use new terms, which are far less ambiguous. In- 
stead of the environment and the individual, organs and 
functions, they discuss situations and behaviors of the 
whole organism. The individual organism studied is no 
more important in "the situation" than is the environ- 
ment, and "the behavior" of the individual organism is 
necessarily viewed as part and parcel of the totality of 
the conditions with which the individual has to deal. 

But the larger part of the sociological discussion of 
the day is still based on the study of individuals or insti- 
tutions or societies in relation to their present and past 
environment. We constantly forget that science and 
civilization are concerned with the future of the human 
race, and that we are striving to evolve an increasing 
adaptability for future uses rather than to adapt our- 
selves to any fixed environment or to fix ourselves in any 
given form, no matter how promising it may seem to be. 

When Spencer spoke dogmatically of the ideal man in 
the ideal social state, of "the final stage of human evolu- 
tion," and of "perfect adaptation," he urged the only 
logical and honest conclusion to which the individual- 
and-environment method of thinking can attain — but he 
abandoned the new and distinctively human feature man- 
kind has introduced into evolution. The older "evolu- 
tionists," in a word, took the reverse of the anthropocen- 



86 THE LARGER ASPECTS OF SOCIALISM 

trie, humanist, or pragmatic point of view. Having lost 
sight of the central truth that all problems and solutions 
revolve about man, they based their thinking on external 
forces and ideals such as "laws" of nature or Spencer's 
Perfect Man. And most of the educated people of to- 
day, trained in the older habit of thought, still forget 
the complete contrast in the character of "evolution" be- 
fore the interference of man and the character of the 
"evolution" created by man. In proportion as man takes 
control of nature, plays one "law" against the other, 
and develops a new environment and a new life, the his- 
torical performances of nature before man appeared 
gradually dwindle into insignificance. And the day will 
doubtless come when "historical" sciences will have no 
more influence on our daily thought than has the political 
and economic history of past generations on our public 
affairs. 

We are chiefly interested, not in the "origin of species" 
in nature, but in the destiny of species under man, not 
in the "creative evolution" of nature, but in the infinitely 
more creative evolution of man. Our affair is not with 
the' evolution of life and its adaptation to the natural 
environment, but with the evolution of man, and the 
adaptation of life to his purposes. And even the con- 
trol of the life around us matters less than the control 
of our own lives, and the control of our physiological 
evolution less than that of our psychological evolution 
and of social progress. 



THE ABUSE OF HISTORY 

There is a complete contrast between the pragmatic 
treatment of history and the so-called evolutionary stand- 
point. Pragmatically, history should be studied, and is 
to be understood, only as a comparison of the aims 
toward which humanity is actually, though not always 
consciously, striving at the period written about with the 
aims of the period during which the writing is done. 
History can teach us much as to the psychological nature 
of men, but little as to the possibilities of human achieve- 
ment. We can see what men were like under various 
conditions. But, in view of recent discoveries, most of 
these conditions are so utterly dissimilar to those of the 
present as to have no bearing whatever on present ques- 
tions. We can learn something of the general nature of 
men, but very little of the nature of the problems of the 
men of to-day. 

That history which is to have a practical value in the 
double sense that it not only throws light on human na- 
ture, but tells us something about how to act, must deal 
almost exclusively with very recent periods, or at least 
the historical perspective must increase very rapidly as 
we approach the present. It must give by far the 
largest part of its attention to the great revolution in 
civilization that has occurred since the general introduc- 
tion of steam transportation a generation ago, and very 
much less attention to the two preceding generations, 

87 



88 THE LARGER ASPECTS OF SOCIALISM 

when steam was merely applied to manufacture, less still 
to the four or five preceding centuries since the inven- 
tions of printing and gunpowder, and very little indeed 
to the previous history of civilization; and from this 
point of view the history of mankind before civilization, 
or the foundation of cities, has practically no value. We 
have, then, two functions of history from the prag- 
matic standpoint. The chief function is to show how 
men develop under the most varied conditions, for the 
most part utterly dissimilar to our own. Besides this, 
it may make men realize to some degree in which direc- 
tion the greatest progress lies, by observing the course 
it has taken in very recent times, and projecting it into 
the future. The further back such history goes, the 
less reliable it is. Nor can it be called in any way a sci- 
ence, even when it concerns itself only with the imme- 
diate past and tries only to predict the immediate future. 
Its aim, however, is scientific in the sense of the defini- 
tion by Ostwald, in which he contrasts genuine science 
with the pseudo-historical sciences. For genuine science, 
according to Ostwald, exists exclusively for the purpose 
of prophecy, and in science (and history as well) "we 
must seek to establish only such facts of the past as will 
be useful for prophecy." 1 

Professor J. B. Bury defines history, from the evolu- 
tionary or "genetic" standpoint, as consisting in "a con- 
tinuous succession of changes, where each state arises 
causally out of the preceding," and he says that the busi- 
ness of historians is to trace this genetic process, to ex- 
plain each change, and ultimately "to grasp the com- 
plete development of the life of humanity." He declares, 
further, that history should be viewed as a "causal 
process which contains within itself the explanation of 
the development of man from his primitive state to the 
point which he has reached," and claims that "such a 



THE ABUSE OF HISTORY 89 

process necessarily becomes the object of scientific inves- 
tigation," and that "the interest in it is scientific curi- 
osity." In a word, history is to become a science: 

"The conception of the history of man as a casual de- 
velopment meant the elevation of historical inquiry to 
the dignity of a science. Just as the study of bees can- 
not become scientific so long as the student's interest in 
them is only to procure honey or to derive moral lessons 
from the labors of 'the little busy bee,' so the history 
of human societies cannot become the object of pure 
scientific investigation so long as man estimates its value 
in pragmatical scales. Nor can it become a science until 
it is conceived as lying entirely within a sphere in which 
the law of cause and effect has unreserved and unre- 
stricted dominion." 2 

Certainly history would not only be a science, but 
the science of sciences if it were possible that it could be 
mastered in this manner. But the proposal to "grasp 
the complete development of the life of humanity" is as 
ambitious and abstract as that of any theologian or meta- 
physician that ever existed, not even excepting Hegel, 
and the same may be said of the statement that history 
must contain "within itself" the explanation of the 
whole development of man. 

What is really implied by the "genetic" view seems to 
be that the historian is to aim at omniscience, for the 
only simplification that is offered to him in his effort to 
swallow the universe is that he is to swallow it by 
stages. If he does not understand a certain period, he 
can always throw himself back on the period preced- 
ing. This procedure not only does away with the need 
of any scientific hypothesis, as we find necessary in the 
sciences, but it assumes that all the causes of any im- 
portance are visible in the preceding period. 



90 THE LARGER ASPECTS OF SOCIALISM 

Like the other "evolutionists," Bury rejects especially 
those very historians who have come the nearest to giv- 
ing us a true pragmatic history. The Greeks and Ro- 
mans, especially Thucydides, and also Macchiavelli, who 
applied the classical spirit to the history of Florence at 
the time of the Renaissance, were pragmatists in the 
truest sense of the word. If we do not gain very much 
from reading their works, this is because the periods of 
which they treat are now so distant (even Macchiavelli 
was relegated to utmost antiquity by the subsequent gen- 
eral introduction of printing) and because they were 
aristocrats writing about aristocracy for aristocratic 
readers. Yet Bury complains that these ancient prag- 
matists "never viewed the history of human socie- 
ties as a phenomenon to be investigated for its own 
sake." This is exactly the feature of their work that ap- 
peals to the modern pragmatist. They knew the con- 
scious aims of the men of their time, and even their un- 
conscious motives, which to a very large measure they 
shared, and they described them from this most practical 
and vital standpoint. And we always gain more from a 
work undertaken for a definite purpose or definite pur- 
poses, if these purposes are not too narrow, than we do 
from any undertaking which rests merely on "intellectual 
curiosity," to use Bury's phrase. 

The early pragmatic histories, however, lacked an ab- 
solutely vital feature of present-day pragmatism. Before 
the evolutionary hypothesis and genetic history, prag- 
matic writers confessed an individual interest in and a 
personal bias toward the periods of which they wrote. 
This is also a feature of present-day pragmatism. But 
the pragmatism that is apparently to succeed evolution- 
ism has taken quite as much from the latter as from the 
earlier pragmatism. We now confess not only an indi- 
vidual bias, but the particular bias of the period in which 



THE ABUSE OF HISTORY 91 

we write. And, further, we confess the bias of time and 
place in general. That is, we cannot write as fruitfully 
of the remote in time and place as we can of the near. 
Historical perspective demands not only that we should 
not be too near our subject, but that we should not be too 
far. And two or three generations, especially if marked 
by an industrial or social revolution, may be too far. 

A good illustration of the early pragmatism may be 
found in the history of the English Commonwealth by 
the first of England's individualist philosophers, William 
Godwin — a work that appeared in 1824, not many years 
before the ''evolutionary" epoch in science and history 
writing. Godwin denies that he is wholly "impartial," 
and says that he wishes to be considered as "feeling as 
well as thinking." He confesses "approbation of a 
cause" and "respect of persons," and says that he is not 
indifferent to human rights, improvement, or happiness. 
His history is not to be inspired merely by intellectual 
curiosity. All of this is pragmatism. But if we go a 
little deeper we find Godwin moved exclusively by an ab- 
solutist philosophy. If he does not pretend to be coldly 
scientific, he does claim to be an impartial, moral judge, 
discriminating between the good and evil in men and 
events by some test of philanthropy and altruism which 
he does not concede will change with time and place. The 
only valid criticism he would admit would be that per- 
haps the absolute moral criterion of some other abler 
and more impartial individual might prove better than 
his. He does not desire to overcome his personal equa- 
tion, but he does hope, on the contrary, that he is "wholly 
unaffected" by his environment and his relation to the 
period he describes : 

"If the events of which I treat had preceded the Uni- 
versal Deluge or passed in the remotest island of the 
South Sea, that ought to make me sober, deliberate, and 



92 THE LARGER ASPECTS OF SOCIALISM 

just in my decisions; it ought not to make me indifferent 
to human rights, improvement or happiness. The near- 
ness or remoteness of the scene in respect of place or 
time, is a consideration of comparatively inferior mag- 
nitude: I wish to be wholly unaffected by the remem- 
brance, that the events took place about a century pre- 
vious to my birth and occurred on the very soil where 
my book is written." 3 

This is the exact contrary to post-evolutionary prag- 
matism. In so far as Godwin's book has value, this is 
in proportion as he was affected by his nearness to the 
events in time and place — provided only enough time had 
elapsed to allow the sequels of events to show them- 
selves, and that Godwin was reasonably familiar with 
countries with which the English Commonwealth was in- 
volved. No great industrial or social revolution had 
intervened — for the English "revolution" of 1688 merely 
registered the actual strength of the various forces that 
contended from 1640 to 1660, and the "industrial revo- 
lution" had not yet arrived even in its mid-career. But 
now a great industrial and social revolution has inter- 
vened, and while the present historian has the advan- 
tage of vast masses of new materials, he can neither un- 
derstand the daily life of Cromwell's time as well as 
Godwin could nor can he care as much about it (assum- 
ing that their natural gifts are equal). The chief dis- 
qualification of Godwin is solely that he tried to imagine 
himself remote from the Commonwealth in time and 
place, and endeavored to ignore the special temporary 
and local interest of his own period in the period of 
which he wrote. In so far as he tried to write for all 
time, he cut down the duration of his work. 

Evolutionary pragmatism agrees with Godwin only in 
rejecting "the dry light of science." Instead of accept- 
ing the personal equation, we would use eveny effort to 



THE ABUSE OF HISTORY 93 

overcome it by cooperation and discussion; but we 
would frankly avow our limitation according to our 
time and even to our country. 

When it is carried outside of its proper uses and its 
limitations denied, history is always reactionary. And it 
is because the justifiable use of history is so strictly lim- 
ited that the overwhelming majority of historical writ- 
ings are, to a greater or less degree, retrogressive. 

"The historical sense," says Nordau, "is natural in all 
those who profit by respect for tradition; in others it is 
the artificial product of education and culture. There 
is good reason why the ruler exercising an authority 
created by the force of a strong ancestor, a nobility pos- 
sessing riches, position, and power, originating in a more 
or less remote past, or the representatives of the numer- 
ous and varied interests that gather round a court and 
ruling class, should foster and glorify the recollection of 
their origin, and devote an honorable branch of every 
institution to the study of the past. It is to their ad- 
vantage to do so, and they have the means to impress 
their point of view upon the multitude, for whom tra- 
dition represents nothing but repression, humiliation, and 
injury." 4 

We must remember, then, that not only history itself, 
but all the sciences which are studied in the so-called his- 
torical manner, and all of the "evolutionary" sciences in 
the older sense of the term, as well as that sociology, 
anthropology, and philosophy, which are based on his- 
tory, are apt to be more or less reactionary — though, of 
course, this is not necessarily the case in every in- 
stance. 

Professor Robinson defines the conservative as the 
man who "still justifies existing conditions and ideals by 
standards of the past rather than by those of the present 
or future." It is possible to take the charitable view 



94 THE LARGER ASPECTS OF SOCIALISM 

that the conservative is honestly deceived in his loving- 
interpretation of the past, but this is probably a funda- 
mental error in most instances. Very few of our con- 
servatives, either through family or culture, are closely 
tied to the past. The overwhelming majority of them 
have been recruited from among the new rich, who have 
dug up the past and taken up with its culture partly 
because this promoted their interests, and partly because 
it was the easiest and most natural thing for a leisure 
class to do. 

Professor Robinson recognizes the reactionary char- 
acter of the "historical sciences" which, therefore, com- 
pose nearly all of the subjects taught in cur schools and 
colleges, and very aptly asks : 

"What would happen if the teachers in our schools 
and colleges, our theological seminaries and law schools, 
should make it their business to emphasize the temporary 
and provisional character of the instruction that they 
offer, and urge the students to transcend it as fast as 
a progressive world permitted ?" 5 

History is not only reactionary, but it is useful, in the 
form we usually give it, almost exclusively to that class 
in the community which produces nearly all the reac- 
tionaries. As Nordau says : 

"The historical sense is an artificial product of the 
ruling classes, who use it as a means for investing the 
existing order, which is advantageous to themselves 
alone, with a mystic and poetic charm, for beautifying 
abuses by the glorification of their origin, and for casting 
a glamor of half-tender, half-reverential awe over in- 
stitutions that have long lost any reasonable justifica- 
tion and become useless and meaningless. Its practical 
purpose, in a word, is to oppress and deceive the present 
with the assistance of the past." 6 



THE ABUSE OF HISTORY 95 

What a contrast between this frank expose of the true 
character of most of our historical studies, and the 
claims made for history by some of the greatest men of 
the last century, such as Bancroft, who exclaimed : 
''History is a divine power that cannot be falsified by 
human interpolations," and Schelling, who sees in his- 
tory as a whole "a continuous revelation of the absolute 
gradually accomplishing itself." 7 

History, on the contrary, depends necessarily upon the 
individual character of each individual historian, is a 
product of schools of historical writing, and is limited by 
the interests of the ruling class. The wish of the his- 
torian Ranke "to extinguish himself in order to display 
the naked reality of things" is, as Nordau says, not only 
impossible, but undesirable, since such a selfless person 
would have no human sympathy or understanding with 
which to interpret events. 

But Nordau, like the typical "evolutionist" he is, 
dwells chiefly on the fact that the historian is limited by 
the general conceptions of his time. From this he 
reaches logically the ultra-pessimistic conclusion that all 
history is very largely invalidated. The true conclusion 
is that all history, like everything else, must necessarily 
evolve, that it is necessarily adapted by the historian to 
the uses of the time in which he writes. This does not 
make it untrue, however; it is true for the people of the 
period in which the historian is doing his work. The 
later historians will take an entirely different point of 
view, or, what is still more likely, will neglect almost 
completely the facts that seemed interesting to the previ- 
ous generation. Far from being discouraging, the rec- 
ognition that history can only be written in this way 
shows that we have lost the absolute and dogmatic habit 
of mind, and are in a condition to get the greatest pos- 
sible benefit from it. 



96 THE LARGER ASPECTS OF SOCIALISM 

The only rigid limitation on history is the one I have 
previously expressed, that we should not endeavor to get 
too much practical use out of the history that passes back 
more than a generation or two. As to previous history, 
what we can chiefly get is that same literary inspiration 
that we secure from the more imaginative and psycho- 
logical writers in their interpretation of individual lives. 
The conditions do not interest us ; but we are inspired by 
the tremendous capacities and variability of men, by the 
efforts they put forth and not by the things they did. 

We find the pragmatic philosophers, such as Dewey, 
thoroughly permeated with the pragmatic view of his- 
tory: 

"The ethical value of history teaching will be meas- 
ured by the extent to which past events are made the 
means of understanding the present, — affording insight 
into what makes up the structure and working of society 
to-day." 8 

Dewey, however, takes "genetic history" to correspond 
to "experimental science." On the contrary, genetic his- 
tory, as represented by Bury and others, seems to corre- 
spond to historical science only, and the view of history 
which would correspond to experimental science is un- 
doubtedly the pragmatic one, as I have explained it. 

Robinson also realizes thoroughly the importance of 
preserving the pragmatic historical perspective, which 
does not mean that we are to give a greater regard to 
the past than we have, but very much less. Describing 
the recent industrial revolutions, he says : 

"So it has come about that the tool has again come 
into its own as the agent and symbol of man's progress, 
and that the past one hundred and fifty years have seen 
vastly greater changes than the whole five thousand years 
that elapsed between the reign of King Menes I of Egypt 



THE ABUSE OF HISTORY 97 

and that of George III of England. Just as the use of 
a stick and a piece of flint began the intellectual develop- 
ment which slowly raised man above the ape in his habits 
of life, so a new method of operating his tools — the steam 
engine — ushered in an expansion of his activities, inter- 
ests, and social and moral problems, the end of which is 
not yet/' 9 

Carrying out the same figure a little further, we might 
say that since the general adoption of steam transporta- 
tion in the last half of the nineteenth century there has 
been more progress than in the whole of the century 
from 1750 to 1850, and consequently the larger part of 
our special historical studies (studies dealing with con- 
ditions as well as men) should be given almost exclu- 
sively to the last fifty or sixty years. 

The history of the more distant past, conceived prag- 
matically, may also be valuable, not only for the insight 
it gives into human character and capacity, but also as a 
history of errors, of mere tradition, the pathology as it 
were, both of the human mind and of society. Such 
social errors, diseases and blind habits as come to us 
from the distant past, for the most part, have no longer 
any foundation in fact, and survive only in an attenu- 
ated form. Nevertheless, they do survive, if serving an 
entirely different function. For they are resuscitated, 
and given an artificial life — for reactionary purposes. 
To combat reactionary history, then, a sort of negative 
or pathological history is indispensable. In other words, 
it is worth a moderate amount of effort to know why 
we should not follow historical analogies or seek for 
specific precedents from the dead part of the past. 

We can now trace the relation between this pragmatic 
view of history and the so-called materialistic interpre- 
tation of Karl Marx. Two hypotheses, which Kautsky 
calls "necessary laws," constitute Marx's chief contribu- 



98 THE LARGER ASPECTS OF SOCIALISM 

tions to history, the materialist interpretation and the 
class-struggle. It has commonly been asserted that, in 
his "materialist interpretation," Marx based history 
really on the evolution of machinery, and the following, 
among other passages, has been quoted in proof of this 
position: "The hand-mill produces a society with 
feudal lords, the steam-mill a society with industrial 
capitalists." In other words, the technical evolution of 
industry, apparently, is supposed to be the primary cause 
of all social changes. But closer examination shows 
that Marx, who was a most voluminous writer, used on 
innumerable occasions expressions of an altogether 
broader character. Some of these have been collected 
together by Heinrich Cunow, one of the editors of Vor- 
waerts, and published in the Neue Zeit in 191 1. 

Marx's interpretation of history did not take as the 
basis of all social changes the evolution of "technical 
forms of industry," but the evolution of "social economic 
systems," to use Cunow's expression. Marx spoke usu- 
ally, not of technical production, but of "social produc- 
tion," of "economic methods," "economic structure," 
etc., and he defines this social production as "the material 
process of social life," as "the creation of social life," 
and as "the methods of production of material life." In 
all these cases it is evident that he is centering his atten- 
tion on the whole social or life process and not merely 
on its mechanical side. 

Kautsky's historical studies have included those of 
Marx and applied them to wider fields, and he has 
been a very devoted yet reasonably independent fol- 
lower in Marx's footsteps. As he is also familiar with 
theories and facts of the period since Marx wrote, I shall 
discuss his views as the present day form of Marx's 
historical theory. Kautsky admits that the changes in 
evolution of the technique of weapons (e, g., the inven- 



THE ABUSE OF HISTORY 99 

tion of gunpowder) and in the evolution of general ed- 
ucation (e. g., the printing press) have had an impor- 
tance far greater than most other economic changes. In 
other words, the history of warfare and coercion and the 
history of knowledge are of special importance in the 
history of production in general (e. g., that of agri- 
culture, of commerce, etc.). It may be added that the 
development of transportation systems has a similarly 
exceptional significance ; not only does it immensely fur- 
ther the evolution of industry and trade, but it con- 
stitutes the direct binding together of mankind through 
travel and communication — aside from these purely eco- 
nomic aspects — so that the greatest of industrial revolu- 
tions is undoubtedly the revolution of transportation that 
took place in the last half of the nineteenth century, while 
the inventions of gunpowder and printing ought per- 
haps to be put in the second rank. This relegates the 
application of steam to manufacture at the beginning of 
the eighteenth century; and the consequent increase of 
production at that time to a position of entirely subor- 
dinate importance. What is called the industrial revolu- 
tion, in other words, is of less importance either than the 
later revolution in transportation or the earlier destruc- 
tion of feudalism and establishment of merchant repub- 
lics and landlord monarchies that followed after the 
invention of gunpowder and printing. 
As Kautsky says : 

"One must not interpret Engels' polemic against the 
physical force theory (of history) as if he said that 
force plays only a subordinate role in the setting up and 
maintenance of servile conditions. That would be just 
as false as that conception of the materialist interpreta- 
tion of history which says that it denies the effect of all 
psychical activity in history. Without mind and violence 
there is no history — but the endeavor as well as the 



IOO THE LARGER ASPECTS OF SOCIALISM 

achievements of the mind and of force are economically 
conditioned." 10 

Here certainly is a very modest statement of the 
materialist interpretation of history, one indeed that 
would justify us, it seems to me, in calling it the so- 
cial or realistic rather than the economic interpreta- 
tion as is so often done to-day. For if we give to the 
evolution of intelligence and of violence an equally im- 
portant position to that of conditions of production or 
industry, we have a thoroughly realistic picture of so- 
ciety. 

Still more recently Kautsky has given an interpre- 
tation of the materialist conception, which shows that it 
takes into account objectively every psychological factor 
in history, and is intended only to exclude or minimize 
the importance of abstract ideas, abstract moral princi- 
ples, and abstract ideals. 

"For Marxism the action of a given class does not 
depend upon its material interests alone but also on the 
material conditions in which it lives. These determine 
its material interests, but they also determine the way in 
which it recognizes them, the way in which it is con- 
scious of them and tends to defend them, what its de- 
mands are, where it seeks its enemies, whether it fights 
against them and when and by what means. All these 
things may take on the most manifold and changing 
forms at different times within the same class having the 
same interests." n 

As I have suggested, the phrase "concrete conditions" 
might be used instead of "material conditions" for it 
would more patently take into account objective psy- 
chological elements (though Kautsky' s interpretations 
show that he tries to stretch the word "material" to cover 
this point). It is evident from this passage, at any rate, 



THE ABUSE OF HISTORY IOI 

that habits of action and of hostility, individual psycho- 
logical development and capacity are given due 
weight. 

So also we find that; the Marxian theory that history 
has consisted in class struggles is given a very broad in- 
terpretation ; indeed, it may amount to nothing more dog- 
matic than the assertion that a systematic parasitism al- 
ways in evidence after a certain stage of culture has been 
reached — as we can see in Kautsky's views of slavery. 
Indeed, Vandervelde, the most prominent of Belgian So- 
cialists, is the author of a well known work in which he 
classes all these phenomena together under the head of 
social parasitism. Nordau and the other critics of Social- 
ism, then, are not at all justified when they claim that 
Socialists teach that the necessities of production account 
for all the various forms of society and institutions that 
humanity has evolved. On the contrary, the central ob- 
ject of Socialist striving is the desire that the form of 
society should in the future correspond to the necessities 
of social production and the economic needs of the whole 
population — and their greatest historical generalization is 
that this has not been so in the past. 

Of course many others besides the Socialist writers 
have discussed social parasitism. The presentation of 
Nordau himself, for example, which teaches that in- 
equality has been the fundamental fact, and that on this 
basis parasitism and exploitation were inevitable. Spen- 
cer's theory that history has consisted in progress from a 
military to an industrial society also implied that the his- 
tory of the past has been the history of parasitism, 
though Spencer views the military system as having al- 
ready passed into relative decay, and as being doomed to 
comparatively rapid extinction, while Nordau, on the 
contrary, shows that militarism and other forms of so- 
cial parasitism are the very basis of present society. 



102 THE LARGER ASPECTS OF SOCIALISM 

From the pragmatic standpoint then the only objec- 
tion to the Marxian hypotheses (the class-struggle and the 
materialistic conception) would be if it were attempted 
to get conclusions of present value by applying them to 
conditions that now belong wholly to the past. And it 
must be confessed that there has been a strong tendency 
among Socialist writers from the time of Marx to follow 
the intellectual fashion of the nineteenth century and 
appeal to history for ''scientific laws." Marx himself, it 
is true, attached comparatively little importance to the 
period preceding the French Revolution, and if he gave 
a considerable place to that great event, it was not be- 
cause he failed to realize that a momentous industrial 
revolution had since intervened, but because the ideas, 
the political institutions and the social forms of the 
Europe of the time when he did the most important part 
of his writing (1845-1870) were largely inherited from 
the former epoch. 

But Marx's successors have failed fully to realize two 
absolutely vital facts : ( 1 ) that owing to the extremely 
important set of changes which were completed during 
Marx's lifetime the periods dealt with in his early and 
best known works have become ancient history to us and 
(2) that industrial and social evolution since Marx 
ceased to write have brought it about that even the period 
of his lifetime and of the birth of the international move- 
ment have very little practical bearing on our period. 
Yet the revolutions of 1789 and 1848 continue to play 
an extremely important role in Socialist literature, while 
the practical questions of the day are more likely than 
not to be discussed in the light of the old International 
which expired nearly forty years ago, the Paris Com- 
mune of 1 87 1, the Gotha Congress that marked the 
formation of the German Party in 1875 or tne Brit- 
ish trade union history of the same period. .The period 



THE ABUSE OF HISTORY IO3 

of our Civil War and the years immediately following it 
and under its influence would obviously be too far back 
for practical political and economic conclusions in this 
country, even for general purposes. But it is a double 
error for Socialists to go so far into the past. For above 
all industrial tendencies and the popular movements on 
which their reasoning is supposed to be based were in 
their early infancy at that time. 

The so-called class-struggle and materialist conception 
are really views of present society and not of the past, 
and were largely so intended. That the latter was 
brought forth as a conception of history, however, in- 
dicates that history did have an undue influence on So- 
cialist thought from the beginning and this influence has 
continued even since. If these Socialist hypotheses are 
to apply to history at all they should be applied to con- 
temporary history — although it only creates confusion 
to use the term history in this connection. The So- 
cialist (and pragmatic) view is nearer to Nietzsche's 
anti-historical standpoint. 

The interpretations of history to which I have so far 
referred have been those of historians or philosophers of 
history. The views of a creative philosopher and master- 
mind like Nietzsche, though less accurate and systematic, 
are far broader and far more suggestive. For the phi- 
losopher of history, like the historian, must have the 
creative power, as Nietzsche has pointed out with his 
usual brilliancy : 

"You can only explain the past by what is highest in 
the present. Only by straining the noblest qualities you 
have to their highest power will you find out what is 
greatest in the past, most worth knowing and preserv- 
ing. Like by like ! Otherwise you will draw the past to 
your own level. Do not believe any history that does 
not spring from the mind of a rare spirit." 12 



104 THE LARGER ASPECTS OF SOCIALISM 

The historian cannot be a cold and purely intellectual 
scientist, but must on the contrary be a many-sided and 
deep-feeling man of action, who can interpret the varied 
human motives with which he has to deal. Nietzsche 
has no words strong enough with which to denounce the 
conception of history as a mere science : 

"Objectivity is so often merely a phrase. Instead of 
the quiet gaze of the artist that is lit by an inward flame, 
we have an affectation of tranquillity : just as a cold de- 
tachment may mask a lack of moral feeling. . . . 
Everything is favored that does not rouse emotion, and 
the driest phrase is the correct one. They go so far as 
to accept a man who is not affected at all by some par- 
ticular moment in the past as the right man to describe 
it." 13 

If we mean by history, as Nietzsche does here, the 
history of the whole past, and not merely of the last 
generation or two, this is especially true. The history 
that deals with human nature rather than human prob- 
lems, with Plato and Dante, with the Chinese and the 
Egyptians, surely needs the very broadest outlook and 
the deepest insight. 

Nietzsche agrees with pragmatism that history must 
not aim at mere generalization: "I hope history will 
not find its whole significance in general propositions, and 
regard them as its blossom and fruit." Among the 
generalizations he objects to is the one which attributes 
all changes to mere material processes : "It seems that 
all human actions and impulses are subordinate to the 
process of the material world, that works unnoticed, pow- 
erfully and irresistibly." His objection to this generali- 
zation is unique. He does not deny the basic importance 
of material changes, but, in a truly pragmatic manner, 
denies that this is the most interesting or important as- 
pect of history simply because it is the most b.asic: 



THE ABUSE OF HISTORY 105 

"For what opposition is there between human action 
and the process of the world? It seems to me that such 
historians cease to be instructive as soon as they begin 
to generalize. ... If such generalizations as these are 
to stand as laws, the historian's labor is lost; for the 
residue of truth, after the obscure and insoluble part is 
removed, is nothing but the commonest knowledge. The 
smallest range of experience will teach it. But to worry 
whole peoples for the purpose, and spend many hard 
years of work on it, is like crowding one scientific experi- 
ment on another long after the law can be deduced from 
the results obtained." 14 

The only fundamentally doubtful point in Nietzsche's 
view of history should be mentioned here. He makes a 
quotation from Emerson's essay on "Circles" which 
shows him as a believer in the possibility of very funda- 
mental revolutions in history, but as a denier of the im- 
portance of material changes in a far different sense 
from that of the passages just quoted : 

"Beware when the great God lets loose a thinker on 
this planet. Then all things are at risk. It is as when a 
conflagration has broken out in a great city, and no man 
knows what is safe, or where it will end. There is not 
a piece of science but its flank may be turned to-morrow; 
there is not any literary reputation, not the so-called eter- 
nal names of fame, that may not be revised and con- 
demned. . . . The things which are dear to men at this 
hour are so on account of the ideas which have emerged 
on their mental horizon, and which cause the present 
order of things as a tree bears its apples. A new degree 
of culture would instantly revolutionize the entire system 
of human pursuits." (Emerson.) 

Probably Nietzsche himself would admit that the last 
sentence could just as well be reversed. Surely a revolu- 
tion in the system of human pursuits would instantly 
revolutionize the whole system of culture. 



106 THE LARGER ASPECTS OF SOCIALISM 

After his attack on history as a science, Nietzsche ob- 
jects to history considered as something utterly past. 
This he calls "antiquarian," and he insists that history 
can be reliable and significant only in proportion as it is 
intimately related to the present : 

"Antiquarian history degenerates from the moment 
that it no longer gives a soul and inspiration to the fresh 
life of the present." 15 

History, conceived in this pragmatic spirit, must not 
only be relative to the present but it must be in close 
touch with the newest forces of the time : 

"History regarded as pure knowledge and allowed to 
sway the intellect would mean for men the final bal- 
ancing of the ledger of life. Historical study is only 
fruitful for the future if it follow a powerful life-givng 
influence, for example, a new system of culture; only, 
therefore, if it be guided and dominated by a higher 
force, and do not itself guide and dominate." 16 

The attitude of the creative and up-to-date historian 
toward the past is therefore as remote as possible from 
reverence. To understand the past, he must be willing 
to use it : 

"Man must have the strength to break up the past; 
and apply it, too, in order to live. He must bring the 
past to the bar of judgment, interrogate it remorselessly, 
and finally condemn it. Every past is worth con- 
demning. ... It is not justice that sits in judgment 
here; nor mercy that proclaims the verdict; but only life, 
the dim, driving force that insatiably desires — itself. 
Its sentence is always unmerciful, always unjust, as it 
never flows from a pure fountain of knowledge." 17 

"The demand for history to be a science" proceeds 
from the need for some doctrine which shall master 
us; the creative historian is driven by the opposite mo- 



THE ABUSE OF HISTORY 107 

tive of mastering something of which he may make use. 
Whenever the demand is made for history to be a sci- 
ence, Nietzsche says it proves that we are in a transition 
period, when the forces of life have grown weak : 

"Life is no more dominant, and knowledge of the past 
no longer its thrall : boundary marks are overthrown 
and everything bursts its limits. The perspective of 
events is blurred, and the blur extends through their 
whole immeasureable course. No generation has seen 
such a panoramic comedy as is shown by the 'science 
of universal evolution,' history; that shows it with the 
dangerous audacity of its motto — 'fiat Veritas, per eat 
vita: " 18 

The result of the passive instead of the active culti- 
vation of historical studies is that mankind is buried 
among the dry bones of knowledge : 

"The modern man carries inside him an enormous 
heap of indigestible knowledge-stones that occasionally 
rattle together in his body, as the fairy-tale has it. And 
the rattle reveals the most striking characteristic of these 
modern men, the opposition of something inside them to 
which nothing external corresponds ; and the reverse. 
The ancient nations knew nothing of this. Knowledge, 
taken in excess without hunger, even contrary to desire, 
has no more the effect of transforming the external life. 
... In other words, it is not a real culture but a kind 
of knowledge about culture, a complex of various 
thoughts and feelings about it, from which no decision as 
to its direction can come." 19 

It is the combination of the antiquarian attitude 
towards history with this passive spirit that makes it the 
perfect tool of reactionary culture : 

"The belief that one is a late-comer in the world is, 
anyhow, harmful and degrading : but it must appear 
frightful and devastating when it raises our late comer 



108 THE LARGER ASPECTS OF SOCIALISM 

to godhead, by a neat turn of the wheel, as the true 
meaning and object of all past creation, and his con- 
scious misery is set up as the perfection of the world's 
history. Such a point of view has accustomed the Ger- 
mans to talk of a 'world-process,' and justify their own 
time as its necessary result. And it has put history in 
the place of the other spiritual powers, art and religion, 
as the one sovereign; inasmuch as it is the 'Idea realiz- 
ing itself/ the 'Dialectic of the spirit of the nations,' 
and the 'tribunal of the world.' " 20 

The terms and theories used in modern historical 
studies, such as "the world-process," and also the com- 
parison of the history of man and of animals, intensify 
this passive and antiquarian spirit : 

"For now the history of man is merely the continua- 
tion of that of animals and plants : the universal his- 
torian finds traces of himself even in the utter depths of 
the sea, in the living slime. He stands astounded in face 
of the enormous way that man has run, and his gaze 
quivers before the mightier wonder, the modern man 
who can see all this way! He stands proudly on the 
pyramid of the world-process : and while he lays the final 
stone of his knowledge, he seems to cry aloud to listening 
Nature : 'We are at the top, we are the top, we are the 
completion of Nature! O thou too proud European of 
the nineteenth century, art thou not mad? Thy knowl- 
edge does not complete Nature, it only kills thine own 
nature! Measure the height of what thou knowest by 
the depths of thy power to do. 21 

" 'Ask thyself to tell what end thou art here, as an indi- 
vidual; and if no one can tell thee, try then to justify 
the meaning of thy existence a posteriori, by putting be- 
fore thyself a high and noble end. Perish on that 
rock!'" 22 

The talk about "laws" in history is but another illus- 
tration of the passive attitude : 



THE ABUSE OF HISTORY IOO, 

"So far as there are laws in history, the laws are of no 
value and the history of no value either." 23 

In Nietzsche's view it is only those men who are 
in some degree participants in present history, who are 
in the current of life, who can understand the life of the 
past, and it is the failure to recognize this fact that has 
led to our unfruitful historical culture: 

"The education of youth in Germany starts from this 
false and unfruitful idea of culture. Its aim, when faced 
squarely, is not to form the liberally educated man, but 
the professor, the man of science, who wants to be able to 
make use of his science as soon as possible, and stands on 
one side in order to see life clearly." 24 

But there are features in Nietzsche's essay on history 
that are still more revolutionary. As opposed to the 
historical culture of the day, he proposes an unhistorical 
culture : 

"We may hold the capacity of feeling (to a certain 
extent) unhistorically, to be the more important and ele- 
mental, as providing the foundation of every sound and 
real growth, everything that is truly great and human. 

"Forgetfulness is a property of all action; just as not 
only light but darkness is bound up with the life of 
every organism. One who wished to feel everything 
historically would be like a man forcing himself to re- 
frain from sleep . . . there is a degree of sleepless- 
ness, of rumination, of 'historical sense,' that injures and 
finally destroys the living thing, be it a man or a people 
or a system of culture." 25 

Nietzsche regards the whole culture of the Germany 
of his time, and there is certainly a large measure of 
truth in his attitude, as being historical; to attack his- 
tory, then, is to attack all existing culture, and the sins 
of culture can be largely attributed to history. Nietzsche, 



IIO THE LARGER ASPECTS OF SOCIALISM 

therefore, proceeds to accuse history of the responsibility 
for the weakening effects of the purely intellectual cul- 
ture of the present period : 

"Looking further, we see how the banishment of in- 
stinct by history has turned men to shades and abstrac- 
tions : no one ventures to show a personality, but masks 
himself as a man of culture, a savant, poet or politician. 

"Only perhaps if history suffer transformation into a 
pure work of art, can it preserve instincts or arouse 
them. 

"Historical culture is really a kind of inherited gray- 
ness, and those who have borne its mark from child- 
hood must believe instinctively in the old age of mankind. 
To old age belongs the old man's business of looking 
back and casting up his accounts, of seeking consolation 
in the memories of the past, — in historical culture." 26 

Even more significant to us than Nietzsche's profound 
and destructive criticism is his understanding that an 
"historical culture" is necessarily reactionary: 

"The historical sense makes its servants passive and 
retrospective. Only in moments of forgetfulness, when 
that sense is dormant, does the man who is sick of the 
historical fever ever act; though he only analyzes his 
deed again after it is over (which prevents it from 
having any further consequences), and finally puts it 
on the dissecting table for the purposes of history. In 
this sense we are still living in the Middle Ages, and 
history is still a disguised theology. . . . What men 
formerly gave to the Church they give now, though in 
smaller measure, to science." 27 

To us, as to Nietzsche, the worship of history is only a 
part of the general metaphysical and pseudo-scientific 
thinking of the age. As Nietzsche says, the question is : 
"Must life dominate knowledge or knowledge life?" I 
have already shown the pragmatic answer to this ques- 



THE ABUSE OF HISTORY III 

tion, and shall deal with Nietzsche's discussion of it in 
a later chapter. I only wish here to indicate how he 
connects this tendency to make knowledge dominate life 
with the character and influence of present-day history. 
He denounces the historians as guilty of precisely the 
same limited and erroneous attitude of life as the scien- 
tists generally : 

"The 'servants of truth' . . . possess neither the 
will nor the power to judge and have set before them the 
task of finding 'pure knowledge without reference to 
consequences/ knowledge, in plain terms, that comes to 
nothing. There are very many truths which are unim- 
portant; problems that require no struggle to solve, to 
say nothing of sacrifice. And in this safe realm of in- 
difference a man may very successfully become a 'cold 
demon of knowledge.' " 28 

Like Stirner, with whose writings he was apparently 
unfamiliar, Nietzsche can find nothing more condemna- 
tory to say of science for science's sake than to apply to 
its practitioners their own proudest title, the "servants 
of the truth." 

Pragmatism requires that historians, as well as scien- 
tists, shall be the masters not the servants of truth. 



VI 

SOCIETY AS GOD 

Spencer and Comte may be taken as the founders of 
sociology, which they hoped would introduce the scien- 
tific spirit into the most important of all fields of human 
endeavor and inaugurate a new epoch for the race. 
Progress that had been blind, contradictory, and acciden- 
tal was to become intelligent, purposive, and organized. 
It was not a mere revolution in society that they had in 
mind, but something of far greater import, a revolution 
in social evolution for all subsequent time. 

But in spite of the new social sciences, that have arisen 
in the last half century, it is almost as true to-day as it 
was in Spencer's time that even the scientifically trained 
mind refuses to depart from its prejudices in social ques- 
tions — which touch the roots of every individual's life, in- 
cluding that of the scientist. Spencer shows that in judg- 
ing social problems the scientifically trained neg- 
lect to go back into history, neglect to make an adequate 
study of analogous cases in contemporary societies, and 
especially fail to inquire "what will be the indirect actions 
and reactions of the proposed organization — how far it 
will retard other social agencies having like ends." 

"Most important of all," Spencer continues, "is the 
fact that no allowance is made for the personal equa- 
tion. In political observations and judgments the quali- 
ties of the individual, natural and acquired, are by far 
the most important factors. The bias of education, the 

112 



SOCIETY AS GOD 113 

bias of class relationships, the bias of nationality, the 
political bias, the theological bias — these, added to the 
constitutional sympathies and antipathies, have much 
more influence in determining beliefs on social questions 
than has the small amount of evidence collected." (My 
italics.) * 

No words could be chosen to express better the pres- 
ent day attitude of representative Socialists towards the 
so-called social sciences, sociology, political science and 
political economy, of our time — which they believe to be 
profoundly and almost completely vitiated by the bias 
of class. 

Spencer merely mentions the class bias as one of the 
causes of the collapse of the scientific spirit in the so- 
cial sciences, but it is probably the underlying cause of all 
the deficiencies in our sociological thought of which 
he speaks. Socialism shows that this is so, pragmatism 
shows that it could not be otherwise. The new philoso- 
phy and psychology teach that we know as we act. A 
sound sociology then can only spring from a social move- 
ment, and the sociology that will last must owe its origin 
to the movement that works toward and ushers in the 
new period. Speculative social philosophy can no more 
lead anywhere than can dogmatic philosophy generally. 
Philosophy must take its root in applied science — sociol- 
ogy in the social movement. 

While the early theoretical sociologists did not carry 
us very far, it must not be supposed that thoughtful 
Socialists are unappreciative of their work. There can 
be no question that Spencer and other social philosophers 
have furnished Socialism more food for thought, more 
suggestions, if not more accurate generalizations, than 
most Socialist writers. 

Socialism, like sociology, is forced, first of all, to meet 
the great underlying question — how is the freest and 



114 THE LARGER ASPECTS OF SOCIALISM 

fullest development of the individual to be secured while 
society is doing more and more of the things which were 
formerly done by individuals? 

Nordau gives an excellent summary of the position of 
leading social philosophers on this question of the rela- 
tion between the individual and society. The one group, 
including Pascal, Comte, and such modern psychologists 
as Wundt and Mach, take the ultra social point of view. 
Pascal is quoted as saying in the preface of his "Traite 
du Vide" : "We must look upon the continuity of the 
human race throughout the centuries as the continued 
existence and progressive experience of a single human 
being," Comte as saying in his "Positive Philosophy" : 
"From the static or dynamic point of view, man is really 
and fundamentally an abstraction; reality belongs to 
humanity alone," while Mach, it is pointed out, conceives 
of humanity as a "polypus" whose members "have lost 
their organic relationship." 

The other group, including Schopenhauer, Louis 
Blanc, Lotze and Maine, who recognizes individuals 
alone as being real, though going to the other extreme, 
is nearer to the majority of Socialists. Most interesting 
of the exponents of this view are the German sociolo- 
gists, Simmel and Herbert Spencer. Simmel says : 

"Nothing is real save the movements of the molecules 
and the laws that regulate them. No peculiar law can 
be assumed as governing the sum of such movements 
when grouped together in a totality." Spencer says the 
same thing: "A totality of men possesses the qualities 
that can be deduced from the qualities of the individuals. 
. . . The qualities of the units determine the qualities 
of the combinations." 2 

Nordau also rejects the notion that regards the ab- 
straction "humanity" as the reality, as being a theory that 
was handed down to us from the theologians and meta- 



SOCIETY AS GOD 115 

physicians, and says that "individual men alone, and not 
a totality of men, whether it be called people, class, so- 
ciety or humanity, represent reality for the natural his- 
tory of man." 

From the Socialist standpoint there is no reason why 
any true individualist should not develop, without los- 
ing any of his individualism, into an equally thorough- 
going Socialist, and indeed the tendency for individualists 
to become Socialists as well has existed from the very be- 
ginnings of modern individualism. One of the earliest 
and greatest of British individualists, William God- 
win, wrote : "Equality of conditions or, in other terms, 
the equal admission of all to the means of perfection 
[the eighteenth century term for development] is the 
law that the voice of justice imposes rigorously on hu- 
manity. All other changes in society are good only if 
they are fragments of this ideal state and degrees for 
attaining it." 3 No better expression of Socialism could 
be given and Godwin himself seems to understand per- 
fectly that a highly organized and powerful society 
would be necessary for carrying this principle of equal 
opportunity into effect. 

One of the most consistent, careful and enlightened 
individualists of the present time is John Morley, whose 
views often go so far as even to resemble those of 
the philosophical anarchist. But it is rare that even 
Morley's extreme individualism would give offence to the 
Socialist. He insists, for example, that the individual 
and the mass must be free to make their own mistakes. 
Not only is this the sole way in which they will learn, 
but if any too strenuous an effort is made to suppress 
these mistakes by depriving the people of liberty the rem- 
edy is likely to be worse than the disease. "For," he 
continues, "there are in the great seed plot of human 
nature a thousand rudimentary germs in wheat and in 



Il6 THE LARGER ASPECTS OF SOCIALISM 

tares, of whose properties we have not had a fair op- 
portunity to assure ourselves; and if you are too eager 
to pluck up the tares you pluck up with them untried pos- 
sibilities of human excellence." It is not the Socialists 
who are combating such principles as these but "State 
Socialist" statesmen, who have been the natural and in- 
evitable reaction against the excesses of that laisser-faire 
theory of government, for which Morley and his school 
were largely responsible. 

No Socialist could insist with more power than did 
Spencer on what is perhaps the most essential element 
of social evolution, namely, the demand that "plasticity," 
the fullest freedom for future development, be preserved 
at any cost. Moreover, the school of thought and politi- 
cal practice which is most feared by the Socialists to-day 
is the one that advocates that same Bismarckian "State 
Socialism" to which Spencer was so vigorously opposed 
— on the ground that it sacrificed plasticity and the fu- 
ture for immediate results. 

"Beyond a certain point there cannot be further growth 
without further organization. Yet there is not a little 
reason for suspecting that beyond this point organiza- 
tion is indirectly repressive — increases the obstacles to 
those re-adjustments required for larger growth and 
more perfect structure . . . there is evidence that 
its type tends continually to become fixed, and that each 
addition to its structure is a step toward further fixa- 
tion." 

Indeed, does not social evolution mean just precisely 
the opposite of such fixation of society? 

The very word Socialism, however, seems to imply 
that, where there appears to be a conflict between 
society and the individual, it is the individual that must 
give way. And some of the language used by Socialists 
would seem to justify this conclusion. 



SOCIETY AS GOD 117 

The social philosophy by which this "State Socialism" 
is usually supported has been formulated frequently in re- 
cent years, but nowhere more boldly or with greater po- 
litical authority than in the works of J. R. MacDonald, 
M. P. His theory, which is typical of many others, 
makes no sharp distinction between society and the state, 
and in this resembles closely the worship of the state as 
we see it in Rousseau, Hegel, and many other political 
writers. MacDonald endorses Rousseau's principle that 
the problem of liberty is largely one of, "how the state 
can force the individual to be free." 4 According to this 
philosophy the state must refuse to grant the individual 
a right of any kind except, as MacDonald says, "for pro- 
moting its ends." 5 

"In the eyes of the state, the individual is not an end 
in himself, but the means to 'that far-off divine event to 
which the whole creation moves.' Or, this thought may 
be translated into this form: The State does not con- 
cern itself primarily with man as a possessor of rights, 
but with man as the doer of duties." 6 

The individual is told to. remember his duties and to 
forget his rights — the very language that has been used, 
again and again, by all the "benevolent" despots of the 
past. 

The state is everything and the individual nothing: 

"The state represents the political personality of the 
whole. . . . It thinks and feels for the whole. The 
life of the whole is its life. It, therefore, is the best 
assessor of the result of individual action upon the whole 
and upon other individuals." (My italics.) 7 

The state is both the head and the heart of the so- 
cial body; the people outside of the state are mere 
hands. If the organic theory is objectionable (as I shall 
show) because it considers the individual as merely 



Il8 THE LARGER ASPECTS OF SOCIALISM 

a specialized organ of society, what shall we say of a 
theory that regards the individual, not as a dependent 
organ of the body but merely as a cell, and that the cell 
of a subordinate part? 

MacDonald says that Huxley realized how small are 
the so-called differences between society and organism 
and continues : 

"The cells that are ultimately differentiated to become 
the nerve system of organisms are the ordinary cells 
which go to make up organic tissue, and they differ 
from muscular cells no more than a doctor differs from 
an agricultural laborer. 

"Moreover, the work of organic nerve systems is 
paralleled in Society by political functions as a Socialist 
conceives them, the function of the nervous system is to 
co-ordinate the body to which it belongs, and enable 
it to respond to impressions and experiences received at 
any point. It can also originate movement itself. Evi- 
dently the individualist cannot admit any such differen- 
tiated organ in Society. But the Socialist, on the other 
hand, sees its necessity. Some organ must enable other 
organs and the mass of Society to communicate impres- 
sions and experiences to a receiving center, must carry 
from that center impulses leading to action, must origi- 
nate on its own initiative organic movements calculated 
to bring some benefit or pleasure to the organism. This 
is the Socialist view of the political organ on its legisla- 
tive and administrative sides. It gathers up experience, 
carries it to a center which decides corresponding move- 
ments and then carries back to the parts affected the 
impulse of action." (My italics.) 8 

If the political organ gathers up experience, decides 
what is to be done, and sees that it is done, it is hard 
indeed to see what function is left to the "cells" of the 
other organs of the social body except to serve as me- 
chanical means for carrying out the orders of the polit- 



SOCIETY AS GOD I IO, 

ical "cells", i. e., Members of Parliament and govern- 
ment officials. 

Any other psychology than this ultra-organic one Mac- 
Donald calls individualism and he is at the greatest 
pains to show what a small role the individuals (except 
M. P.s and officials) play. 

"An individualist psychology exaggerates the free play 
of the human will, and decides the organic type of So- 
ciety mainly on the ground that each individual in Society 
has an independent will and consciousness of his own. 
In the organism, consciousness is concentrated in a small 
part of the whole — the brain or nervous system; in 
Society consciousness is diffused throughout, and no 
specialized function of feeling can be created. This 
Spencer calls a cardinal difference. But upon examina- 
tion the difference appears to be not nearly so great as 
it seems at first." 9 

The reader will find the expression I have italicized 
especially worthy of consideration. In a theory which 
minimizes the free play of the human will, the state 
must indeed do the thinking and the feeling for the 
whole. 

"In the Socialist state all political functions must be 
specialized, as the digestive function is in an animal 
organization, and cannot be diffused through the whole 
of the community," says MacDonald, and he evidently 
includes among such political functions that of a special 
ruling class. "What we need," he writes, "is the pro- 
fessional politician," and he leaves no doubt as to what 
he means : 

"The politician does not express other people's opinions 
but his own. The electors and himself derive their 
intellectual being and social ideals from the Society in 
which they live, and, therefore, the relationship between 
them is not that of master and servant, but of two per- 



120 THE LARGER ASPECTS OF SOCIALISM 

sonalities deriving their life from the same source and 
agreeing or disagreeing regarding their common in- 
terests. . . . The representative represents Society, 
he is not the delegate of the majority which elected him. 
His responsibility is to the whole and not only to a part. 
He defines his opinions, he makes his points of view clear 
and he is accepted or rejected." 10 

Here we see the member of Parliament first made of 
equal weight with the sum of his constituents, and then 
given authority over them on the implied ground that he 
represents the whole of the nation while they do not. 
In this philosophy, moreover, the elected person repre- 
sents not only those citizens of other districts who did 
not vote for him and never heard of him, but also those 
who voted against him in his own district. "Minorities 
are always represented," he says. MacDonald's par- 
liament is evidently an elective oligarchy. But, once 
the ultra-organic view is admitted, and once it is con- 
ceded that the government is and must be absolutely 
supreme over the individual, no other conclusion is 
possible. 

John A. Hobson, speaking for the collectivist but non- 
socialist Radicals, gives us the same "State Socialist" 
view. In spirit he also is akin to Rousseau and Hegel : 

"The individual's feeling, his will, his ends and in- 
terests are not entirely merged in or sacrificed to the 
public feeling, will and ends, but over a certain area they 
are fused and identified, and the common social life thus 
formed has conscious interests and ends of its own which 
are not merely instruments in forwarding the progress 
of the separate individual lives, but are directed primarily 
to secure the survival and psychical progress of the com- 
munity regarded as a spiritual whole." (My italics.) 

After laying this foundation, Mr. Hobson strives to 
show that Society does not weigh so heavily on the in- 



SOCIETY AS GOD 121 

dividual as it appears to do, for "even in the most highly 
developed organisms, such absolute and unchecked power 
is not entrusted to the expert government of the cerebral 
cells. The entire afferent nervous system attests the 
contrary : the individual organs and their cells are con- 
tinuously engaged in transmitting information to the 
cerebral center and in offering suggestions. This infor- 
mation and these suggestions are chiefly if not wholly 
self-protective in their purport." At least it seems the 
cells are to have no very decided influence, for after 
all the individual is to have merely a right to complain 
or petition; the government is to command and he is to 
obey. "It is to this right and habit of complaint that 
we must look for what in social politics corresponds to 
the franchise. So far as the conscious polity of the 
animal organism is concerned, the direct work of govern- 
ment is highly centralized; a highly specialized portion of 
the nervous system issues the commands, it is the normal 
function of the several organs to obey, and in the 
ordinary course of nature they do so. They have had 
no separate voice in determining the organic policy or 
in issuing the order which they help to execute." n 

Accordingly Hobson is forced definitely to reject the 
underlying principles of democracy, though, strange to 
say, he is in favor of a number of advanced democratic 
measures. He believes in efficiency more than he does in 
democracy, since he says that "political power ought to be 
distributed in proportion to ability to use it for the public 
good". Apparently he forgets that the world has never 
yet produced a benevolent oligarchy that could satisfy 
any community as well as a government of its own — a 
government which would allow it at least to make its 
own errors. Benevolent despots have, without excep- 
tion, been forced on communities from above or from 
without, and, if accepted, this has only been as long as 
such superior forces continued to be present. 



122 THE LARGER ASPECTS OF SOCIALISM 

The organic theory of society, in a word, implies that 
the activities of the state are of infinitely greater mo- 
ment than the self -development and self-government of 
citizens who use the state as their mere tool. To this 
Socialists might retort in the words of Nietzsche : "The 
state is the coldest of all monsters. And its lies are 
cold ; and this lie creeps out of its mouth : I, the State, 
am the people." 12 

The idea that the state is society, and that society 
represents the best welfare of every individual, is not 
a new one, but a reaction to an older view. An early 
American publicist, Joel Barlow, almost as well known 
at the time as Thomas Paine, summed it up in a form 
in which it was once widely circulated in this country: 
"Every individual ought to be rendered as independent 
as possible of every other individual, and at the same 
time as dependent as possible on the whole community." 
The first principle arose from the effort of the French 
and American Revolutionists to rid themselves of a 
personal government and the tyranny of individuals, 
that is, of the monarchy and aristocracy. The second 
principle is that theory of Rousseau which dominated 
the French Revolution at the time of the Terror when, 
for a few months, Europe witnessed one of the worst 
tyrannies that it had seen for centuries, even though it 
was a tyranny that was supported at first by public 
opinion. From the very first, however, the Socialism 
of the continent of Europe, and that of America also, 
has been in the fullest reaction against this "State So- 
cialism" of Rousseau and the Jacobins — and the Ja- 
cobins, on their side, had been as violently opposed to the 
early communists, like Babeuf, who were already ap- 
pearing in their time. 

In this matter, indeed, the French Revolutionists and 
their opponents were as one. Burke's view of the state 



SOCIETY AS GOD 1 23 

and society was as tyrannical as that of the Jacobins. 
The only difference was that the latter looked upon the 
new state as alone having the right to tyrannize over 
the individual, while the former gave this right to the 
traditional state, which was to be preserved intact for- 
ever: "an established monarchy, an established aristoc- 
racy, an established democracy, each in the degree it 
exists, and no greater." This "state" of Burke's would 
appear to have been very similar to the mediaeval con- 
ception of the Church, for it was "a partnership in all 
science, a partnership in all art, a partnership in every 
virtue and in all affection." 13 It has been remarked 
that the French Jacobins also seemed to inherit the 
fanatic faith and spirit of persecution of the Church, 
which they merely replaced by their conception of "the 
republic one and indivisible." Burke's conception is ob- 
viously theocratic, and scarcely to be distinguished from 
the view of the New England theocrat, Cotton, who 
said that it was "a carnal and worldly, and, indeed, an 
ungodly imagination to confine the magistrates to the 
bodies and goods of the subjects and to exclude them 
from the care of their souls." 

It is through comparing it with the older theocratic 
ideas from which it is in part descended that we obtain 
the clearest insight into the nature of "State Socialism" 
and the organic theory of society on which it rests. 
Though presented in new words, the theory is essen- 
tially the same, and all the more dangerous because it 
now claims science as its sanction. In the present con- 
ception it is not held that God has taken charge of 
society, but that society is God, or is soon to become 
God. Even this theory has a certain plausibility, for 
some of our profoundest and most subtle philosophers 
have argued that humanity, past and future, might in- 
deed take the place of God in our thinking. But this 



124 THE LARGER ASPECTS OF SOCIALISM 

latter view, though probably to be taken more as poetry 
than as philosophy, is infinitely the less obnoxious of the 
two, for perhaps the larger part of humanity, and no 
doubt the more important part, is not yet born, and no 
earthly philosopher, priest, or scientist can reasonably 
claim to represent it. On the other hand, society is exist- 
ing humanity, and the state can make a very plausible 
claim, indeed, to represent it. 

It would seem, then, that Spencer's denunciation of 
what he called "Socialism" as being "the coming sla- 
very" was justified; for he was evidently speaking of 
"State Socialism," which was already shaping itself in 
Great Britain long before his death, of "Socialism'" as 
opposed, not to class rule, but to individualism. Spen- 
cer's views about this "Socialism" embody, better than 
those of any other social philosopher, both the good and 
the evil of the individualism he was defending, and, at 
the same time, show the strength as well as the weakness 
of the "State Socialism" he attacked. 

The keynote to Spencer's idea of economic or social 
evolution was that we are living in an age of trans- 
ition from the older militaristic society which has pre- 
vailed since primitive times to a new industrial so- 
ciety. He recognized that the railways and telegraphs 
were already introducing, at the time when he wrote, in 
the middle of the nineteenth century, an economic and 
social revolution of unequaled and unimagined magni- 
tude, and that the completion of this revolution gave the 
best hope for social progress. But, like the Socialists, 
Spencer seemed to feel that this great economic revolu- 
tion may work to a certain degree for retrogression as 
well as for progress. For anything that gives a new 
strength and force to militarism is, by Spencer's very 
definition, in so far, a retrogressive force. And he rec- 
ognizes that, in the great industrial revolution p through 



SOCIETY AS GOD 125 

which we are passing, while "productive activities have 
been facilitated, there has been a furtherance of that 
centralizing, coercive social type required for offensive 
and defensive actions." 14 In other words, economic cen- 
tralization, unified transportation systems, large indus- 
trial corporations, growing empires, and government 
regulation and ownership are bringing about a coercive 
centralization in society that makes not only for indus- 
trial progress but also for military organization. 

Spencer showed that there is an intimate relation be- 
tween the highly centralized industry and government 
which make for militarism and the powerful state de- 
sired by the "State Socialists." Such an increase of the 
power of the present state over all individuals and classes 
would not only facilitate war, but would in turn be facili- 
tated by war : 

"It would need but a war with an adjacent society or 
some internal discontent demanding forcible suppression, 
to at once transform a socialistic administration into a 
grinding tyranny like that of ancient Peru; under which 
the masses of the people, controlled by crews of officials, 
and leading lives that were inspected out of doors and in 
doors, labored for the support of the organization which 
regulated them, and were left with but a bare subsistence 
for themselves." 15 [Spencer should have added that 
the subsistence given would be sufficient to give the 
people the maximum efficiency as laborers only.] 

Spencer's definition cf the older military society as 
being one of "status" and compulsory cooperation, while 
the present industrial society is, very largely, one of 
"contract" and voluntary cooperation, is familiar. Few 
persons will question that he is correct in applying the 
former terms to the militaristic "State Socialism" of 
Bismarck. It is indeed noteworthy that, in this in- 
stance, Spencer himself employs the term "State So- 



126 THE LARGER ASPECTS OF SOCIALISM 

cialism," and that he never differentiates it from "So- 
cialism," the term which he ordinarily uses. 

"Well may Prince Bismarck display leanings toward 
State Socialism," says Spencer, since State Socialism 
means: "the despotism of a graduated and centralized 
officialism holding in its hand the resources of the com- 
munity and having behind it whatever amount of force 
it finds requisite to carry out its decrees and maintain 
what it calls order." 16 

State Socialism, according to Spencer's excellent defi- 
nition, means the "re-institution of status not under in- 
dividual masters, but under the community as master." 
The older "feudal Socialisms" of Peru and other coun- 
tries went along with serfdom, or even slavery, and 
under "State Socialism" the individual is also, in a 
sense, to become the slave of the state. Spencer does 
not minimize the economic efficiency of this regime; 
it will undoubtedly be able "to do things." His ques- 
tion concerning it is precisely that of the Socialists, 
"Who is going to control the new Super-State?" 

"Doubtless in the one case as in the other, multitudin- 
ous officers, grade over grade, having in their hands all 
authority and all means of coercion, would be able to 
curb that aggressive egoism which causes the failures of 
small socialistic bodies; idleness, carelessness, quarrels, 
violence would be prevented, and efficient work insisted 
upon. But when from regulation of the workers by the 
bureaucracy we turn to the bureaucracy itself and ask 
how it is to be regulated, there is no such satisfactory 
answer. There must arise a new aristocracy for the 
support of which the masses would toil; and which, 
being consolidated, would wield a power far beyond that 
of any past aristocracy." 17 

This is also the Socialist view of "State Socialism"; 
the only difference being that the Socialist feels that this 



SOCIETY AS GOD I 27 

new aristocracy is already in process of formation, and 
that the capitalist class will easily be transformed almost 
as a body into the bureaucratic masters of the new state. 
Socialists take nothing away from Spencer's generaliza- 
tions, but only carry them out to a more definite conclu- 
sion, as he neglects to say where his new aristocracy 
is to come from. 

Spencer says that this new "State Socialism" will 
make of each citizen the "creature of the community." 
From what I have said above concerning the organic 
theory of the state, which seems to dominate British 
Socialism and anti-Socialist Radicalism alike, is it not 
evident that Spencer is literally and scientifically correct? 

Not only is the individual in danger of becoming the 
"creature of the community," but the existing social 
classes are in danger of becoming hereditary castes, and 
here once more Spencer has expressed so thoroughly 
and adequately the revolutionary Socialist view that his 
text can scarcely be improved upon. Moreover, history 
is justifying him in the most remarkable way, and no 
rulers are proving more ruthless in their suppression of 
popular revolutionary movements than State Socialists 
like Briand, Prime Minister in France. 

"What will happen," asks Spencer, "when the various 
divisions of this vast army of officials united by interests 
common to officialism — the interests of the regulators 
versus those of the regulated — have at their command 
whatever force is useful to suppress insubordination and 
act as 'saviours of society'? Where will be the actual 
diggers and miners and smelters and weavers when those 
who order and superintend, everywhere arranged class 
above class, have come, after some generations, to inter- 
marry with those of kindred grades, under feelings such 
as are operative in existing classes; and when all these, 
having everything in their own power, have arranged 



128 THE LARGER ASPECTS OF SOCIALISM 

modes of living for their own advantage, eventually 
forming a new aristocracy far more elaborate and better 
organized than the old?" 18 

Spencer has outlined as clearly as any Socialist the 
precise character of the new compulsory elements that 
are being strengthened as the state extends its functions. 
He had already foreseen that compulsory arbitration of 
wage questions which now prevails in New Zealand, and 
still more definitely in government employments in all 
countries, and he had realized that, without some revolu- 
tionary change in the social structure and the present 
tendencies of social evolution, an increase of coercion is 
not only probable but inevitable. "Where the regulative 
organization (the government) is anywhere made to un- 
dertake additional functions," he wrote half a century 
ago, "we shall expect that, after the phase of early 
activity has passed by, the plasticity of the new struc- 
ture will rapidly diminish, the characteristic tendency 
toward rigidity will show itself." 19 In an essay writ- 
ten thirty years later, in 1891, he gives a more definite 
illustration of what he means, referring here, as usual, 
to that Socialism with which he was familiar, namely, 
the "State Socialism" of Bismarck and the anti-indi- 
vidualist Socialism of Great Britain. 

"Under the compulsory co-operation which Socialism 
would necessitate," wrote Spencer at this later date, "the 
regulators, pursuing their personal interests with no less 
selfishness, could not be met by the combined resistance 
of free workers [strikes] and their power, unchecked 
as now by refusals to work save on prescribed terms, 
would grow and ramify and consolidate till it became 
irresistible." 20 

It appears from this paragraph that Spencer, pre- 
cisely like the Socialists, leans on the ultimate right and 



SOCIETY AS GOD 1 29 

ability of the workers to strike as being the underlying 
basis of liberty and democracy- 
Why was it, then, that the great individualist failed 
to realize the possibility of democratic Socialism — 
which in no way contradicts true individualism? For 
the Socialist movement existed and was quite advanced 
before his death. Why did he imply that "State Social- 
ism" and Socialism were one and the same thing, and 
that the latter, like the former, involved slavery? The 
answer is two-fold. It is well known that Spencer be- 
lieved that it would be possible to maintain commercial 
competition and to make it so fair that all would have 
an equal opportunity to compete, and that capitalism, 
purified from militarism, status, and privilege, would 
become the embodiment of "social justice." In other 
words, he was a defender of capitalism. But it is not so 
commonly known that just as in economics he was a 
capitalist, so in politics, like all non-Socialists if we 
look deeply enough, he was opposed to democracy, ex- 
cept as an ultimate ideal. — which means little or nothing. 
He argued against democracy on the ground that 
every people has, after all, that form of government 
which it deserves, and that the improvement of political 
institutions can be of no use whatever. He took his 
data and conclusions, like most conservatives, from con- 
ditions that were rapidly passing, chiefly those of Eng- 
land, which at the time he wrote (i860- 1890) was in- 
deed the foremost nation economically and among the 
most advanced politically — though this advance indicated 
no great internal political development, but was for the 
most part a mere reflex of economic prosperity, other na- 
tions having gone much further in comparison to their 
economic opportunity. Spencer, therefore, was justified 
in reasoning from England, rather than another country 
— though not in assuming its conditions as lasting. And, 



130 THE LARGER ASPECTS OF SOCIALISM 

in England, it cannot be denied that the rule of the 
capitalist class was, and is still, based as much on the 
voluntary or moral subjection of the masses as on their 
political and economic impotence. We cannot deny 
the applicability of the following argument — to the 
England of 1884. 

"If men use their liberty in such a way as to surrender 
their liberty, are they thereafter any the less slaves? If 
people by a plebiscite elect a man despot over them, do 
they remain free because the despotism was of their own 
making? Are the coercive edicts issued by him to be 
regarded as legitimate because they are the ultimate out- 
come of their own votes? As well might it be urged 
that the East African, who breaks a spear in another's 
presence that he may so become bondsman to him, still 
retains his liberty because he freely chose his master." 21 

It would indeed appear, not only from the case of the 
election of Napoleon III in France half a century ago, 
but also from the present tendency in America to 
place all party power in the hands of a single political 
leader, that in all countries under capitalism the middle 
classes and small farmers have very little appreciation 
of what democracy means. And Spencer shows in this 
and other passages that he is no democrat, for the es- 
sence of democracy is not that the people will necessarily 
rule well, but that it is indispensable that they should rule 
themselves, in order that they may learn to rule. 

Spencer's scepticism of democracy seems to be based 
on the unquestionable failure of the British masses to 
rely upon themselves alone, that is, the absence of what 
Socialists call the class struggle in politics. 

"It is a self-evident truth that we may most safely 
trust those whose interests are identical with our own; 
and that it is very dangerous to trust those* whose in- 



SOCIETY AS GOD I3I 

terests are antagonistic to our own. All the legal 
securities we take in our transactions with one another 
are so many recognitions of this truth. We are not 
satisfied with professions. If another's position is such 
that he must be liable to motives at variance with the 
promises he makes, we take care, by introducing an 
artificial motive (the dread of legal penalties), to make 
it his interest to fulfill these promises. Down to the 
asking for a receipt, our daily business habits testify 
that, in consequence of the prevailing selfishness, it is 
extremely imprudent to expect men to regard the claims 
of others equally with their own; all asseverations of 
good faith notwithstanding." 22 

We have here a principle which would justify every 
ultra-democratic measure, even the recall of judges. 
Spencer rightly pointed out that the British masses had 
shown a belief that "their interests will be as well cared 
for by members of the titled class as by members of 
their own class," since nearly half of the House of Com- 
mons were at that time either noblemen or connected 
with noblemen by blood, to say nothing of financial 
connections. Surely the same criticism applies equally 
to those employees who elect their employers to repre- 
sent them to-day. In Great Britain there was ground 
when Spencer wrote for the profoundest distrust of a 
people which seemed incapable or unwilling to exert its 
manhood. But it does not follow that it will be so 
always, even in Great Britain, and it is certain that 
the working people of other countries have no such 
habit of respect for the ruling class. 

The Socialists are in thorough accord with the great 
individualist when he objects to parliamentarism, and 
the despotic rule of mere majorities : "The assumed 
divine right of parliaments, and the divine right of ma- 
jorities," as he says, "are superstitions. . . . Unre- 



I32 THE LARGER ASPECTS OF SOCIALISM 

stricted power over subjects, rationally ascribed to the 
ruling man when he was held to be a deputy-god, is 
now ascribed to the ruling body, the deputy-godhood of 
which nobody asserts." 23 But the only time when ma- 
jorities need be feared is when they become permanent, 
when society tends to be divided into permanent classes, 
for otherwise the majority would be a shifting one on 
each important question, and people who are often in a 
minority hesitate to exercise their power despotically 
when they happen to be in a majority. And the very 
purpose of Socialism is to put an end to the stratification 
of society into classes, to what Spencer calls status, 
whether the old political status of militarism, which still 
survives, or the economic status of capitalism, which 
Spencer acknowledged but practically ignored. 

Individualism, as presented by its chief spokesman, 
has many points in common with social-democracy, but 
it is lacking in two respects — it can neither imagine any 
economic order or any political order fundamentally dif- 
ferent from our own, and it has, therefore, been unable 
to propose any way whatever out of present difficulties. 
It is true he recognized the evils of present society, and 
died with the gloomiest forebodings as to the future 
also. There was present in Spencer, however, as there is 
in the majority of individualists, and also of "State So- 
cialists," a semi-conscious or sub-conscious toleration of 
class rule. This alone accounts for their repeatedly ex- 
pressed horror of the possibility that the powers of gov- 
ernment mfght be used for the purpose of interfering 
with the relations between class and class. To be sure, 
such interference, if undertaken by "State Socialists," 
would be for the worse, but why might it not be under- 
taken also for the purposes of liberty? Spencer ex- 
pressed a fear lest the government should try "to inter- 
fere with any of the special relations between, class and 



SOCIETY AS GOD 133 

class," or even to "undertake to bring home positive ben- 
efits to citizens." He believed that class rule had been 
maintained by militarist government in the past, and pre- 
dicted that it might be forcibly maintained by "State So- 
cialism" in the future. Why, then, might not the present 
class rule, which he by no means denied, be equally due, 
in part at least, to its possession of the powers of co- 
ercive government ? — and how could this condition be 
removed except by the interference of a democratic gov- 
ernment "with the special relations between class and 
class" ? 

Spencer's answer to this question shows that, like 
other anti-Socialist individualists, he both recognizes the 
class struggle and definitely takes the side of the ruling 
class. For it appears that he stood for democratic gov- 
ernment only in so far as the power of the government 
is restricted, in so far, that is, as the government is im- 
potent : "As fast as representation is extended, the sphere 
of government must be contracted," he wrote, of the ex- 
tension of the suffrage. In other words, he was anti-col- 
lectivist for precisely the same reason that many cap- 
italists are now becoming collectivists. As the power of 
the people over the government increased he wished to 
decrease the power of the government over industry. 
Similarly present-day capitalists, as they become more 
united and better organized, and secure a more and more 
firm control over the government, wish to extend its in- 
dustrial functions. 

Spencer saw that even the Radical, as well as the 
"State Socialist," was under the impression that "so long 
as he has a good end in view he is warranted in exercis- 
ing over men all the coercion he is able," though he 
is "as prompted by class interests and the desire to 
maintain class power" as the Tory. But he seemingly 
had no glimpse of the coming of any genuinely social 



134 THE LARGER ASPECTS OF SOCIALISM 

and democratic movement which represented no class but 
the abolition of all classes. 

We see, then, that individualism of the ordinary anti- 
democratic and capitalistic variety rests, in spite of the 
pretensions by which many of its exponents have doubt- 
less deceived themselves as well as others, on a perfectly 
definite proposal to maintain class rule as against the 
rule of the people. Spencer is conscious that his de- 
fence of capitalism means a defence of class rule, and 
explains his position generally by that abstract suppo- 
sition that the only possible or conceivable alternative 
is ''State Socialism." But (in 1896), toward the end 
of his life, he threw down the mask that he had been 
almost unconsciously wearing. Finally he stepped out 
into the light and placed himself shoulder to shoulder 
with the other reactionaries of the time in a crude mis- 
application of the survival of the fittest theory, and 
spoke of the disappearance of free competition in in- 
dustry and of the interference of the state, not as 
leading to possible tyranny, where every democrat may 
agree with him, but as being wrong because by this 
means modern peoples were "fostering their feebles"; 
he argued against this state of society as one where "the 
superior, persistently burdened by the inferior, are hin- 
dered in rearing their own better offspring, so that the 
offspring of the inferior may be as efficiently cared 
for," and concluded that, from such a "Socialist" policy, 
"a gradual deterioration of the race must follow." We 
begin to feel in this disclosure of the underlying state 
of mind of the greatest exponent of anti-social indi- 
vidualism that this doctrine is not always accidentally 
anti-democratic, but is often inspired by a fierce and con- 
scious hostility to so-called "inferiors." 

We see that anti-individualist "Socialism" and anti- 
social individualism are at the bottom one. JBoth rest 



SOCIETY AS GOD 135 

outwardly on a demand for the absolute sovereignty 
of an abstract social principle. It matters not if that 
principle in one case makes a god of society and in 
the other insists upon the absolute abdication by the 
majority, composed of individuals, of any form what- 
ever of genuine social control; the two principles are at 
the bottom one. To Spencer, as to the "State Socialists," 
society is organic, a sacred product of evolution, which 
the hands of mankind are too profane to touch. Both 
views rest upon a new dogmatism that supports itself 
upon a narrow conception of evolution and biology, both 
are in the most complete contradiction to the spirit and 
philosophy of modern science, and both have "survived" 
solely because of their utility to the ruling class. 

It is now widely recognized that the only possible 
choice lies between social democracy and the class state. 
Dewey is only one among many of our leading sociolo- 
gists who clearly grasp this truth. Both anti-social in- 
dividualism and anti-individualist "Socialism" in oppos- 
ing social democracy, or the control of society by the 
human units which compose it, are either maintaining the 
present system of class rule, or laying the foundation for 
some other similar system in the future. For, if we are 
to have any kind of class rule, it will no doubt grow 
up out of that which already exists; in fact, the irresisti- 
ble tendency, under all conditions, is for class privileges 
to be passed down to children and for class rule to make 
itself permanent and develop into caste. 

This does not mean that hereditary classes or castes 
are inconsistent with considerable social movement from 
one class to another or with a certain progress, as we 
saw even in the old China. Indeed, it is only by allow- 
ing this safety valve for the spirit of revolt that con- 
stantly grows up among the masses, and by absorbing 
a certain number of the strongest individuals from the 



I36 THE LARGER ASPECTS OF SOCIALISM 

masses into the ruling class that caste has been able to 
maintain itself even in China. If this process is too 
rapid, the result would be, of course, that the ruling class 
would absorb more individuals from the masses than it 
was able to provide privileged positions for. But, if the 
absorption is too slow, then the ruling class is only weak- 
ened by its failure to add to itself and to take away from 
the masses these new forces that lie so ready at hand. 

The widespread and general tendency, then, to in- 
crease the number of those individuals who are ad- 
vanced into the ruling class and to secure their more 
rapid promotion, the increase of equality of opportunity, 
up to a certain point, only serves to weaken democracy 
and strengthen class rule. As this point has certainly 
not yet been reached, every measure which tends to se- 
lect a few of the most able and to promote them rather 
than to secure equal opportunity for all of the unprivi- 
leged mass has a reactionary effect. Improvements in 
the efficiency of class rule do not at all imply its weak- 
ening, any more than the injection of a certain number 
of life peers into the House of Lords would, in itself, 
tend to make it a less powerful representation of heredi- 
tary and class interests. 

The tendency of which I speak has not been very 
widely noted, but neither has it been altogether over- 
looked. Professor C. H. Cooley, for instance, observes : 

"The dominant class in a competitive society, although 
unstable as to its individual membership, may well be 
more secure as a whole than the corresponding class 
under any other system — precisely because it continually 
draws into itself most of the natural ability from the 
other classes. 

"It is increasingly the practice — perhaps in some de- 
gree the deliberate policy — of organized wealth to win 
over in this way the more promising leaders irom the 



SOCIETY AS GOD 1 37 

side of labor ; and this is the respect in which greater 
class-consciousness and loyalty on the part of the latter 
would add to its strength. Thus it is possible to have 
freedom to rise and yet have at the same time a miserable 
and perhaps degraded lower class." 24 

Professor Cooley very rightly concludes that an aris- 
tocracy so maintained, and kept vigorous at the same 
time by the gradual sloughing off of wholly useless and 
parasitical elements, is the strongest imaginable. But he 
fails to hold firmly to the real significance of this per- 
petual renovation of the governing class, for he defines 
this system as "a democratic aristocracy, that is, one 
whose members maintain their position in an open strug- 
gle," and he adds that this system of class rule is not a 
caste rule, and that, therefore, we shall never have a 
revolution. On the contrary, by far the larger propor- 
tion of such a ruling class, though it be true that they 
are able to maintain their position in an open struggle, 
can do so only because, having been born in this class, 
they have had unequal privilege and opportunity. The 
members born in the ruling class maintain their position 
in an open struggle, but they do not gain their position in 
this way, as do those among the masses who have been 
incorporated in the ruling class. Such a "democratic" 
aristocracy as ours is, indeed, the most dangerous and 
powerful preventive for democracy that can be imagined. 

A caste-ruled society by no means implies govern- 
ment by ability; for, as Bernard Shaw has pointed out, 
not only must we accept those who are able to maintain 
their position only by having an unfair start, but we 
must also accept certain types of supposed ability, which 
are defined as such either by a semi-hereditary ruling 
caste or by the perverted public opinion of the society 
they so largely dominate. Professor Lester F. Ward 
has shown at length that our heroes, "military chief- 



I38 THE LARGER ASPECTS OF SOCIALISM 

tains, diplomats, statesmen, etc., are not the true agents 
of civilization," but "the products of their time and the 
mere instruments of society in the accomplishment of 
its ends." They are not really creative; in other words, 
they do not belong to that type of man which will have 
the greatest influence in an enlightened society. Ward 
points out also that those who, like Galton, try to show 
that the ruling class consists of the most able, not only 
on account of those it incorporates into itself in each 
generation, but also on the ground that ability is largely 
inherited, are reasoning on the falsest assumption, class- 
ing as exceptionally able such types as I have spoken of 
and including even judges, whose "greatness," as Ward 
says, is due almost wholly to their exceptional advan- 
tages. 

Socialism demands that every individual born into 
the world be given equal opportunity and a function 
in society corresponding to his native abilities. The pres- 
ent caste system, due to the inheritance of zvealth and 
educational and occupational privilege, means that the 
children of the privileged hold their hereditary advan- 
tage, and that ability is developed in other classes and 
given opportunity only as it helps to maintain this sys- 
tem. 



VII 



THE INDIVIDUAL AND THE NEW SOCIETY— AS SEEN 
BY MAX STIRNER 

Max Stirner is still comparatively little known out- 
side of Germany. But his philosophy is almost com- 
pletely pragmatic on its psychological side, and his work, 
"Der Einsige und sein Eigtentum," propounds some 
principles in philosophy, and especially in social philoso- 
phy, as far-reaching and revolutionary as anything that 
has come from the pragmatists of to-day — particularly 
as to the position of the individual in the new society. 

Stirner wishes every individual to understand, above 
all things, that his thought must serve him, and that he 
must not serve his thought. If an idea exists in his brain 
without being mastered, then necessarily he has taken it 
from some one else, and it is in a sense his master. If 
one has the thoughts only of Mankind, or of Man, then 
one is thoughtless as an individual, for the thoughts are 
not really one's own : 

''He who cannot rid himself of a thought is, in so far, 
merely man, a slave of speech, that treasury of man's 
thoughts. Speech, or the word, tyrannizes over us the 
worst of all, because it leads up against us a whole army 
of fixed ideas. Watch yourself once in your reflection, 
and you will find that really progress exists for you only 
if you are every moment free of thought and speech. 
You are not only thoughtless and speeches in sleep, but 
also in your deepest reflection, yes, more so then than at 
any other time. And only through this thoughtless- 

139 



I4-0 THE LARGER ASPECTS OF SOCIALISM 

ness, this unacknowledged freedom from thought, are 
you in possession of yourself. Only from this point 
of view do you succeed in using speech as your property. 

"If the thinking is not my thinking, then it is merely 
a spun out thought, a word of slavery or a servant's 
word. For my thought the beginning is not a thought, 
but I, and in this way I am its goal, and its whole course 
is only the course of my enjoyment of myself." . . . 

"If there is even one truth to which man must dedi- 
cate his life and his strength because he is Man, then 
he is subjected to a rule, to an overlordship, to law, and 
so forth; that is, he is a servant. Man, Humanity, 
Freedom, and so* forth, are supposed to be such truths." 

If there is a single sovereign truth, in a word, all men 
are its slaves: 

"But the power of thoughts and ideas, the rule of 
theories and principles, the sovereign rule of the spirit 
[one of the most tyrannous of abstractions according to 
Stirner], in a word a hierarchy, will last as long as the 
priests, that is, the theologians, philosophers, statesmen, 
philistines, liberals, schoolmasters, servants, parents, chil- 
dren, married people, Prudhomme, George Sand, 
Bluntschli, and so forth, supply the big words ; the 
hierarchy will last as long as one believes in principles, 
thinks of them, or even criticizes them; for even the most 
bitter criticism, which undermines all existing principles, 
at the bottom believes in principle." 

To Stirner truths or principles exist, but are relative 
to the individual, while truth or principle in general is 
non-existent. He insists, in a seeming paradox, that 
criticism in general is good only when there is not any 
generally accepted criterion of the good or the true. 

"The 'right' criterion is sought after. This right 
criterion is the first presupposition. The critic starts out 
from a principle, a truth, a belief. This is not a creation 



THE INDIVIDUAL AND THE NEW SOCIETY I4I 

of the critic but of the dogmatist. Yes, it is ordinarily 
taken right out of the culture of the time, without further 
ado, as, for example, 'freedom,' 'humanness.' 

"The secret of the critic is some kind of a 'Truth.' 
This is its energizing mystery. 

"But I distinguish between a serviceable critic and 
an individual critic. If I criticize with the presupposi- 
tion of a higher Something, then my criticism serves this 
Something, and is carried on on its account; if, for 
example, I am obsessed by the belief in a 'free state/ 
then I criticize everything from the point of view that 
is suited to this state. For I love this state." 

To Stirner as to pragmatism, a truth in itself is worth- 
less, for "truth is a creation/' 

"Just as you produce countless things through your 
activity, yes, even re-shape the face of the earth and 
everywhere erect the works of man, so you may be 
able to bring about countless truths through your think- 
ing. And we will rejoice in them. But just as I may 
not surrender myself to serve your newly discovered 
machines in a machine-like manner, but only help to set 
them in operation for my own use, so I will only use 
your truths without allowing myself to be used for your 
requirements. 

"All truths under me are dear to me; a truth over 
me, a truth according to which I must govern myself, 
I do not recognize. For me there is no truth, because 
nothing goes before me, not even my nature, not even 
the nature of man goes before me." 

Stirner was by no means ready to accept the super- 
ficialities of evolutionism, for, although biological evo- 
lution was not so clearly or generally recognized in his 
time as it is in ours, social evolution was. He shows, 
however, that the evolutionists of his day, as of ours, 
had not made any very radical changes in their anti- 
quated methods and habit of thought: 



142 THE LARGER ASPECTS OF SOCIALISM 

"You believe you have done your utmost if you boldly 
affirm that there is no 'absolute truth,' because every 
time has its own truth. But by this you leave to every 
time its truth just the same, and create in this way in 
reality an 'absolute truth.' Truth is lacking in no period, 
because every period, whatever its truth, may still have 
a 'truth.' " 

And finally, Stirner leads us to a formulation of prag- 
matism which is certainly as broad and deep as any we 
have had. For to every free critic before Stirner's time 
some idea or other was a criterion. But for the point of 
view he bespeaks, which he calls individual criticism, the 
I is the criterion: 

"I, the inexpressible, and by no means merely a thing 
thought; for the thing thought is always expressible, 
because the word and the thought come together. . . . 
I am the criterion of truth, and I am no idea, but more 
than an idea, that is, inexpressible. My criticism is no 
free criticism, it is not free from me, and it is not 
serviceable criticism, it is not in the service of an idea, 
but it is an individual thing." 

The logic, in other words, which is to govern criti- 
cism, philosophy and thought, is the logic of the human 
organism itself. Those individuals who have assimi- 
lated the most experience and are most developed will 
be freest themselves, and they will do the best work 
when they do not bind themselves to any fixed 
principle or truth, but at every moment express as much 
as possible of their whole nature, and of their whole ex- 
perience as it reacts against the particular question under 
discussion. In a word, Stirner's logic is the inherent 
logic of the organism — and its assimilated experience. 
"If I conceive the idea as my idea," he says, "then it is 
already realized, because I am its reality : its reality con- 
sists in this, that I, the embodied one, have it". 



THE INDIVIDUAL AND THE NEW SOCIETY I43 

"It is said that the idea of freedom realizes itself in 
the history of the world [Hegel]. On the contrary, 
this idea is real in so far as a man thinks it. And it 
is real in that measure as it is my idea, that is, as I 
think; but men develop themselves, and in this self- 
development naturally also develop their thinking. 

"In a word, the critic is not yet an independent in- 
dividuality as long as he fights with ideas as with mighty 
forces, as Christ was not independent of his 'evil temp- 
tations' as long as he had to fight them. For him who 
strives against sin, sin exists. 

"Whether what I think and do is Christian, what do 
I care? Whether it is human, manlike, liberal, or 
unmanlike, illiberal, inhuman, what difference does 
this make to me? If it accomplishes what I want, 
if I find satisfaction in it, then you can belabor it 
with predicates as much as you please. It does not 
matter to me. 

"And perhaps, too, I may in the very next moment 
turn myself against my previous thoughts; perhaps, too, 
I will suddenly change my behavior, but not because it 
does not correspond to Christianity, not because it con- 
flicts with the everlasting Rights of Man, not because it 
strikes in the face the idea of mankind or humanity — 
but because I no longer quite agree with it, because it no 
longer gives me full enjoyment, because I doubt the 
previous thoughts, or because the behavior I have just 
practiced no longer suits me." 

Here we have in the fewest possible words the very 
essence of pragmatic psychology: when a man acts in 
each given moment according to the dictates of his whole 
personality and his whole experience, he acts more ef- 
fectively than he could possibly do by mastering and fol- 
lowing the most perfect logics or philosophies the human 
race has developed. 

It is true that Stirner has used as his weapon against 



144 THE LARGER ASPECTS OF SOCIALISM 

abstractions what might seem to be an abstraction, after 
all, the concept, I, or You. And, undeniably, these have 
no more an absolute value than any other .abstractions. 
You and I are embodied parts of larger wholes. But 
Stirner uses these terms for a literary and not for a 
philosophic purpose. He does not attack ideas, it must 
be remembered, but only insists that ideas must serve 
men. "Society" and "the race," for example, are also 
realities, but they are not absolute realities. They mean 
something different in relation to the thinking and needs 
of each individual. 

The great service of Stirner is that after showing 
why abstractions must be reduced to the minimum, he 
shows how this may be accomplished. He is not only 
a pragmatist, but his work is perhaps the greatest illus- 
tration of what the pragmatic spirit can do. For noth- 
ing could be more profoundly revolutionary than his 
proposed reversal of the currents that have hitherto gov- 
erned human thought. Certainly there are compara- 
tively few philosophers, moralists, or sociologists who 
do not make use of the abstract expression, "Truth" or 
"truth." But Stirner completely repudiates it, as, for 
example, in the following passage, where his ironical 
statement of the prevailing view alternates with his own 
opinion : 

"Truth is something which is free from you, which 
is not your own, which is not in your power. But truth 
is also fully independent, impersonal, unreal and unbe- 
loved; truth cannot take a stand, as you take a stand, 
cannot move, cannot change, cannot develop; truth ex- 
pects and receives everything from you, and even exists 
only through you ; for it exists only — in your head. You 
concede that truth is only a thought, but say that every 
thought is not a true one. Or, as you may also express 
it, not every thought is truly and really a 'thought. 



THE INDIVIDUAL AND THE NEW SOCIETY I45 

Then how do you measure and recognize a thought ? By 
your powerlessness, that is, by the fact that you cannot 
get any further hold on it. If it overpowers you, en- 
thuses you and drives you along, then you hold it for 
true. Its lordship over you demonstrates its truth to 
you, and when it possesses you and you are possessed 
by it, then in it you have truly found — your lord and 
master. As you seek the truth, what is your heart 
really longing for now ? For a master. You are not 
looking after your power, but after some other power, 
and want to elevate some other powerful one." ("Raise 
up the Lord our God.") . . . 

"As long as you believe in truth, you do not believe 
in yourself, and are a servant, a religious man. You 
alone are the truth, or rather you are more than the 
truth, which was nothing before you. At any rate, you 
inquire after truth, at any rate you criticize, but you 
do not ask any further for a higher truth, a truth, that 
is, which is higher than you ; you do not criticize accord- 
ing to such a criterion." 

Stirner says that every abstraction, whether "truth," 
"humanity," or any other, serves only its own purpose, 
and not that of individual men. "Each represents some 
definite and limited 'cause.' " 

"How is it with mankind, whose cause we are sup- 
posed to make our own ? Is its cause by any chance that 
of any other, and does mankind serve some higher cause? 
No, mankind only regards itself, mankind only wishes 
to further mankind ; mankind is its own cause. So that 
it may develop it allows peoples and individuals to 
torture themselves in its service, and when they have 
done what mankind needs, then for gratitude they are 
thrown upon the dungheap of history. Is not the cause 
of mankind a 'purely egoistic cause?' " 

"I do not need to indicate to every one who would 
like to impose his cause on us that he is concerned only 



I46 THE LARGER ASPECTS OF SOCIALISM 

with himself, not with us, only with his welfare, not with 
ours. Only glance at the others. Do truth, freedom, 
humanity, justice long for anything else than that you 
should become enthusiastic over them and serve them?" 

Abstractions are used by the selfish to deceive the 
weak. In his opposition, therefore, to all the parties and 
factions of his time, Stirner calls on men not to accept 
any abstraction, not to leave their cause out of their own 
hands : 

"God and mankind have not trusted their cause to 
anything but themselves. Let me also put my cause 
on nothing but myself. . . . The divine is God's 
cause, the human the cause of men. My cause is 
neither divine, nor human, is neither the true, the good, 
the right, the free, etc., but only mine, and it is not a 
general cause, but is unique as I am unique. For me 
nothing stands higher than myself. . . . What do 
I care for the general welfare? The general welfare 
as such is not my affair, but the extreme height of self- 
denial. . . . 

"How can I be my own if my capacities can only 
develop 'so far as they do not disturb the harmony of 
Society?' [Weitling.] 

"As long as a single institution still exists which 
the individual cannot dissolve, my individuality and my 
possession of myself are still far away." 

Stirner's objection to the abstract goal of communism 
— social solidarity, or "the good of all," he expresses in 
the following question : "Have all one and the same 
good? Is it well with all in one and the same way? If 
this is so, then we are speaking of 'the true good/ Do 
we not in this way come to the same point where religion 
[which is anathema to Stirner] begins its domination?" 
In other words, even "the good of all" is an abstraction 
which can only become an acceptable reality when it is 



THE INDIVIDUAL AND THE NEW SOCIETY 1 47 

interpreted differently by each and every individual. 

Stirner, in a word, objects to any conclusive generali- 
zation whatever, and his views are like those of the mod- 
ern scientists and pragmatists who believe that science 
and philosophy exist only to render concrete service to 
men, and not for the purpose of directing them. We 
need accept no generalizations as in any way authorita- 
tive. At most, they may further the growing control 
of the science over nature, and stimulate the thinking 
and imagination of men. 

It might be supposed at first that the concept " free- 
dom" would satisfy Stirner's very destructive criticism. 
But even this abstraction is not excepted from his at- 
tack: 

'Tree from what? The yoke of serfdom, the over- 
lordship of aristocracy and princes, the domination of 
the desires and passions; yes, even the domination of 
one's own will, of one's will to be oneself, the fullest 
self-abnegation, is nothing but freedom; freedom, that 
is, from self-determination, from one's own self, and 
the striving for freedom as for something absolute, worth 
any price. This put an end to our individuality, this 
created self-denial. . . . The striving for freedom 
turned in every period into the longing for some certain 
form of freedom, for example, freedom of belief, that 
is, the believing man wanted to become free and in- 
dependent. From what? From belief? No! But from 
the inquisitors of belief. So now political or civil free- 
dom. The citizen wishes to be free not from citizenship, 
but from officialdom ; the arbitrariness of princes and the 
like. . . . 

'The striving for a certain kind of freedom always 
directs attention to a new kind of domination, just as 
the Revolution could show its defenders that it could 
give the elevated feeling that it was fighting for free- 
dom, while in truth it was fighting for a certain limited 



I48 THE LARGER ASPECTS OF SOCIALISM 

freedom, which took its point of departure from a new 
domination, 'the reign of law.' 

"You all of you want freedom; freedom wants you. 
Why then do you bargain for more or less? Freedom 
can only be complete freedom; a piece of freedom is 
not freedom. You doubt if complete freedom, the 
freedom from everything, is to be won; yes, you hold it 
for madness even to wish it. Well, stop hunting after 
the phantom then and spend your strength on something 
better than — the unattainable." 

Here we see Stirner ready completely to abandon the 
concept of freedom itself — though he rather leaves it 
than rejects it, for freedom is the negative term corre- 
sponding to positive self expression : 

"Who is to be free? You, I, we. Free from what? 
Answer, from everything which is not you, I, we. So 
I am the seed which is to be freed from all wrappings, 
from all narrowing shells. What remains over when I 
am freed from everything that is not I ? Only I and 
nothing but I. To this I, even freedom has nothing to 
offer. What shall further happen after I am free? On 
this question freedom is silent, just as our governments 
let out prisoners after the time of their sentence has 
passed, and shove them out into destitution." 

It is only when we come to analyze Stirner's position 
toward society and its individual members, however, that 
we see the full value of his philosophy. Useful as his 
thinking is as an expression of modern pragmatism in 
science and philosophy, it is far more useful in clarify- 
ing the conception which must lie at the base of soci- 
ology and ethics. Stirner, like Nietzsche, though an ex- 
treme individualist, is a moral philosopher. Far from 
denying the importance of the relations between individ- 
uals and the institutions and culture they have erected 
through cooperation and struggle, it is with these rela- 



THE INDIVIDUAL AND THE NEW SOCIETY I49 

tions rather than with individual types as such that Stir- 
ner is chiefly concerned. 

The most radical of all individualists, Stirner is un- 
doubtedly the least tainted with the commerical individu- 
alism of free competition and private property, or with 
any of the philosophy, economics, or politics of the ruling 
class. His opposition to ''State Socialism" is accordingly 
more thorough and profound than that of any other 
generally known social philosopher. 

Stirner rejects the concept "society" as a basis for so- 
ciology, for the same reason that he rejects "social duty" 
as a basis for ethics: 

"That society is not an entity that can give, lend or 
guarantee, but an instrument or means from which we 
can get a certain use, that we have no social duties but 
only social interests in the pursuits of which society 
must serve us, that we owe society no sacrifice, but if 
we are to sacrifice anything, we must sacrifice it to our- 
selves; of all this the social reformers and Socialists do 
not think, because they — as Liberals — are caught in the 
religious principle, and are zealously looking for a holy 
society, just as the state was formerly a holy state." 

"If the community is in need of a man, and if he 
finds his aims furthered through it, then it very soon 
prescribes its laws to him, because it has become his 
principle, namely, the laws of society. The principle of 
men soon raises itself to a sovereign power over them, 
becomes their highest nature, their God, and as such 
their legislator. Communism gives to this principle its 
furthest application, and Christianity is the religion of 
society, for love is, as Feuerbach truly says, although 
he did not intend it, the nature of men, that is, the nature 
of society or of social (that is communistic) men." 

Stirner is here discussing not so much the institutions 
of communism as its teachings. What he is attacking is 



150 THE LARGER ASPECTS OF SOCIALISM 

the principle of love, as the bond that is supposed to hold 
society together, as opposed to enlightened self-interest. 
Stirner regards society, which in the French and Ger- 
man manner he often refers to as the state, as being a 
machine : 

"Through the state, too, nothing takes place in com- 
mon, any more than one could say that a fabric is the 
common work of all the individual parts of the machine ; 
it is rather the work of the whole machine as a unit, its 
machine work. In the same way, everything happens 
through the state machine, since it moves the wheels 
of the individual minds, of which not a single one fol- 
lows his own impulses." 

The product of a machine is naturally something arti- 
ficial, something made by the machine rather than a re- 
sult of natural growth. 

"The state tends to make something out of men ; there- 
fore there live in it only made men ; everyone who wants 
to be himself is its enemy and is nothing. 'He is nothing' 
is as much as to say, the state does not use him, leaves 
to him no position, no office, no occupation, etc." 

Stirner by no means denies the possibility that all men 
may become mere parts of the social machine, but he 
believes that in the process they would lose all their more 
important and valuable qualities as men. 

As opposed to such a society or "state," Stirner advo- 
cates a free type of social organization, which he calls 
a union: 

"Our societies and states exist without our making 
them; they are unified but they are not our union; they 
are predestined, and have a particular independent exist- 
ence of their own; they are against us egoists, an 
indissoluble entity. . . . The independent existence 
of the state demands my dependence, its natural-develop- 



THE INDIVIDUAL AND THE NEW SOCIETY 151 

merit, its organization demands that my nature shall not 
develop freely, but shall be cut to fit it; in order that 
it shall develop itself naturally, it lays on me the shears 
of 'culture,' and gives me a training and education suited 
to it, not to me, and teaches me, for example, to respect 
laws, to abstain from the infringement of state property 
(that is, private property), to honor highnesses, divine 
and earthly, etc. . . . 

'The nature of culture and education consists in that 
which the state is able to give me ; it educates me to 
become a serviceable tool, a serviceable member of 
society." 

Stirner is rather a social philosopher than a political 
scientist or political economist, but he also gives in a gen- 
eral way the economic principle that he would have guide 
the free unions of the future, and it is a thoroughly So- 
cialistic one. The organization is to proceed on the basis 
of the needs of the individual rather than on that of the 
needs of society. Those who eat bread are to organize 
a bakers' association, and to come to terms with the 
bakers, etc. : 

"To have bread is my affair, my wish and my need, 
and yet the matter is left in the hands of bakers.". 

Here is a principle apparently diametrically opposed 
to that of the "State Socialists," who wish the state to 
organize production, or to those syndicalist Socialists 
who wish to leave the organization of production to the 
individuals in each industry. There need be no conflict 
with the latter, however, as some form of organization 
of producers would certainly follow in any freely organ- 
ized society, even if the point of departure were the or- 
ganization of consumers, as Stirner proposes, and the 
organization of producers followed as a necessary conse- 
quence from the first. 

Stirner is so thorough in his opposition to the view 



152 THE LARGER ASPECTS OF SOCIALISM 

that regards society as god, or as an absolute sovereign, 
that he even rejects mere revolution as being insufficient, 
on the ground that it merely aims to constitute a new 
society. Instead of revolution, he advocates the spirit of 
revolt : 

"Revolutions and revolts cannot be viewed as equiv- 
alent. The former consists in a reversal of condition, 
of the existing condition or status, of the state of society, 
and is therefore a political or social action ; the latter has, 
indeed, a transformation of conditions as its unavoidable 
result, but it does not take its departure from this, but 
from the dissatisfaction of men with themselves. It is 
not a raising of a banner, but the raising of individuals, 
an uprising without regard to institutions which spring 
out of it. The revolution aims at new institutions, the 
revolt leads us to the point of not allowing anything 
to be instituted any longer, but of instituting ourselves, 
and sets no very great hope on institutions." 

Though Stirner sets no very great hope on institutions, 
he does attach some value to them, which is admitted in 
his statement that political and social changes must follow 
from revolt. It is evident that he does not deny the im- 
portance of institutions, but merely objects to their being 
considered as basic. They are never to take precedence 
over the individual : 

"As long as a single institution continues to exist 
which the individual does not dare to dissolve, my in- 
dividuality and my possession of myself are still far 
off." 

Stirner is as much opposed to instituting a religion of 
the human race as he is to instituting a religion of soci- 
ety. He even objects to the saying of Feuerbach: "The 
highest thing to men is Man." For here the abstract 
"Man," with its various philosophical interpretations, 



THE INDIVIDUAL AND THE NEW SOCIETY 1 53 

may become a new means of establishing outside author- 
ity over individuals : 

"Who does the Liberal look upon as his equal? Man! 
Only be man — and that you certainly are — and the 
Liberal calls you his brother. He asks very little as to 
your private opinions and private stupidities if he can 
only catch sight of the man in you. 

"As he gives very little heed, however, to what you 
privately are, and indeed, in the strict logic of his prin- 
ciple gives no importance whatever to this, he sees in you 
not yourself but the race, not Hans nor Kunz, but the 
man, not the real individual one, but your nature or your 
concept; not the possessor of the body, but the soul. 

"As Hans you would not be equal, because he is Kunz, 
and so not Hans; as man you are the same as he is. 
And as you are as good as non-existent for him as Hans, 
that is, so far as he is liberal and not an unconscious 
egoist, he has evidently taken brotherly love very lightly ; 
he does not love Hans in you, of which he knows nothing, 
and he will hear of nothing but the man." 

Far from viewing the individual as belonging in any 
sense to the race, Stirner claims that the race belongs to 
the individual. He contrasts this new view with the 
opposite Christian outlook: 

"That the individual is a world history for himself 
and possesses the rest of the world's history as his 
property, this passes beyond Christianity. To the Chris- 
tians (Stirner takes the Christian as the type of all 
thinkers before him) the history of the world is the 
higher because it is the history of Christ or of man; 
to the egoist only his history has any value because 
he only wishes to develop himself, not the idea of man- 
kind, not the plan of God, not the intentions of Provi- 
dence, not freedom, etc. He does not see himself as 
a tool of the idea, or as a vessel of God, he recognizes 
no calling, he does not cherish the illusion that he exists 



154 THE LARGER ASPECTS OF SOCIALISM 

for the further development of mankind, and that he 
must contribute his mite to it, but he lives himself out, 
untroubled about the question whether mankind is 
thereby faring well or badly." 

It is evident that such a radical conception of society 
and of the individual's relation toward it necessitates an 
entirely new conception of the individual and of moral- 
ity, and this new conception might be called the construc- 
tive side of Stirner's work. He starts out with Rous- 
seau's principle, that the natural instincts and impulses 
of the individual are in no way anti-social, even though 
they ignore all the conscious formulations of "social 
laws" that he is told he must follow. Stirner contrasts 
this view of men's impulses with the opposite and tra- 
ditional opinion by portraying the answer that is given 
by the ordinary and "super-socialized" individual when 
asked what he is : 

"What am I? So every one of you asks himself. A 
gulf of unregulated and lawless impulses, instincts, de- 
sires, wishes, passions, a chaos without light or guiding 
star! How shall I give a right answer if I only ask 
myself without reference to the commands of God or 
to the duties which morality prescribes, without refer- 
ence to the voices of reason which in the course of his- 
tory and of the bitter experiences of the best and wisest 
have been raised to law? My passions would forthwith 
give me the maddest advice." 

Stirner then replies to this supposed confession: 

"So each one regards himself then as — a devil — for 
in so far as he is not troubled with religion he regards 
himself only as an animal. He would easily find that 
the animal, which only follows its instincts, which are 
similar to its reason, does not counsel and impel itself 
to the maddest actions, but takes very correct steps." 



THE INDIVIDUAL AND THE NEW SOCIETY 1 55 

But while Stirner justifies the instincts, desires, 
wishes, and passions, as against "morality," "reason," 
and so forth, and does not find that the so-called lower 
impulses lead to erroneous conduct, neither does he wish 
to have human beings held together by love, even though 
it is to be regarded as merely a higher and more complex 
development of the lower social instincts. For love, hav- 
ing been conceived and recommended to mankind as a 
duty, has become an abstraction : 

"I would prefer to rely upon the selfishness of men 
rather than on their 'loving service,' their kindness, pity, 
and so forth. The former demands mutuality (as you 
from me and I from you), does nothing for nothing, 
and lets itself be won and — bought. But with what do 
I purchase loving service? It happens only occasion- 
ally that I have to do with a loving one. The service of 
love allows itself only to be of help to my misery, my — 
suffering. What can I offer the other for his help? 
Nothing. I must receive it as a gift. Love is not pur- 
chasable, or rather love can be bought but only through 
mutual love. ('One good turn deserves another.')" 

The attitude of the normal individual or enlightened 
egoist toward another is not that of "brotherly love/' 

"It is true that it makes my joy and happiness to 
live in his joy and happiness. But myself I do not sacri- 
fice to him. On the contrary, I remain an egoist and — 
enjoy him. . . 

"If I see the loved one suffer, I suffer with him and 
have no peace until I have tried everything to console 
and cheer him; if I see him glad, then I am glad on 
account of his happiness. It does not follow from this 
that the same causes bring about suffering or joy in me 
which call forth these effects in him." 

Stirner proposes, instead of the command, "Love one 
another," the command, "Use one another." We are 



I56 THE LARGER ASPECTS OF SOCIALISM 

not to have the same feeling toward all individuals., be- 
cause all are not only different, but so different that they 
are actually incommensurable. It is not true that indi- 
viduals are unequal, for they are altogether more dis- 
similar than that would imply — since there is no com- 
mon measure which can be applied to all or even to any 
two persons. Thus the highest and most fruitful rela- 
tion between any two individuals is something which 
can never be put down in general terms. What is 
"moral" varies with each individual, and as a system 
morality disappears entirely. Human relationships and 
behavior from this point of view become more impor- 
tant than ever. But ethics and morality in the ordinary 
sense disappear — unless we want to retain these old ex- 
pressions for an absolutely new thing: 

"I am a man and you are a man, but 'man' is only 
a thought, a generality; neither I nor you are expressi- 
ble; we are inexpressible because only thoughts can be 
expressed and they consist in expression. 

"Let us therefore center our attention not on the com- 
mon, but on the particular. Let us not seek the most 
extended community, 'human society,' but let us seek in 
others only the means and organs which we use as our 
own property. Just as we do not see our equals in 
trees and animals, so the presupposition that others are 
like us is hypocrisy. No one is my kind, but I regard 
him, like all other creatures, as my property. Against 
this I am told that I should be a man among my fellow 
men, that I should respect in them the fellow man. No- 
body is for me a person to be respected, not even the 
fellow man, but every one is like all other creatures, an 
object in which I have or have not a share, an interesting 
or an uninteresting object, a useful or a useless subject. 

"And if I can use him, I come to an understanding 
and unite with him, in order to increase my strength in 
the union, and through our common power to .perform 



THE INDIVIDUAL AND THE NEW SOCIETY 1 57 

more than single individuals could accomplish. In this 
community, I see nothing else than a multiplication of 
my strength, and only so long as it multiplies my strength 
do I hold to it. But then it is merely a [free] union. 

"Neither a natural nor a spiritual bond holds the union 
together, and it is not natural or spiritual association ; 
not a common blood, not a common belief, brings it 
together, and it is no natural or spiritual association; 
in a stock, a nation, or mankind individuals have value 
only as an example of the same species or race ; in the 
spiritual union, like a community or church, the indi- 
vidual means only a member of the same spirit. What 
in both cases you are as an individual, that must be sup- 
pressed. As an individual you could only affirm your- 
self in a free union because the union does not possess 
you, but you possess it, or put it to your uses." 

Stirner proposes to replace the old command, "Know 
thyself," by the new one, "Price thyself," or "Give thy- 
self thy value." He proposes that everyone should re- 
gard himself only as his own property, to be used up, 
and that one should behave toward this property as one's 
own: 

"I enjoy myself according to my pleasure. I am not 
anxious about life, but spend it." 

Here we have the pragmatic psychology carried to its 
last conclusion. The individual is to use the world, to 
use life, and even to use — himself: 

"From now on the question is not how man can earn 
his life, but how he can spend it, enjoy it; not how one 
can find the true self, but how one has to solve oneself, 
in order to live oneself out." 

The individual of Stirner not only relies upon his 
instincts and intuitions, but views the whole universe 
from that individualist standpoint : "Everything sacred 



I58 THE LARGER ASPECTS OF SOCIALISM 

is a bond, a chain." Indeed, the fact that a certain insti- 
tution or idea is regarded as holy gives the egoist a key 
to his attitude towards it : 

"Just because you regard something as holy, so I turn 
my scorn on you, and even if I respected everything in 
you, your holiness I do not respect." 

In other words, Stirner is fighting against the effort 
of one man to make another bow down to him, on what- 
ever pretext. He objects even to regarding any given 
division of labor as necessary, though it may be useful 
in so far as the individual finds it not too costly. He 
protests against the individual becoming, as it were, part 
and parcel of any institution. He may join it and par- 
ticipate in it, but he does not belong to it : "The indi- 
vidual will not stand being regarded as a mere part, a 
part of society, because he is more. His individuality 
rejects, excludes this limited conception." 

Stirner does not conceive the free individual, however, 
as being merely passive and seeking to escape the evils 
of the past. On the contrary, he objects to the very 
idea of emancipation or liberation. Liberty cannot be 
given to the true egoist. He does not seek emancipa- 
tion, but frees himself by living his own life and refus- 
ing to live that imposed on him by others. His princi- 
ple is the pragmatic one : "What I need I must have, 
and I will create for myself." So Stirner advises him : 

"Cast about and take what you need! With this the 
war of all against all is declared. I alone decide what 
I must have." 

Stirner imagines the objector replying to this: 

"Why that is certainly no new wisdom, for all self- 
seekers have thought that in all times." 



THE INDIVIDUAL AND THE NEW SOCIETY 1 59 

To this he answers : 

"Only when I expect neither from individuals nor 
from the whole what I can give myself, only then do I 
escape from the bonds of love; the mob ceases to be a 
mob, only when it takes hold. Only the fear of taking 
hold and of the corresponding punishment makes it a 
mob. . . . 

"If men succeed in losing respect for property, then 
every one will have property, as all slaves become free 
men as soon as they no longer regard masters as mas- 
ters. 

"All efforts of the mob after happiness and all frater- 
nising of swans must fail, for they spring out of the 
principle of love. Only from the principle of egoism can 
the mob get aid, and it must give this aid to itself, and 
will give it to itself. If it does not allow itself to be 
forced by fear, then it is a power. 

"In a word, the property question cannot be solved 
so kindly as the Socialists, and even the communists, 
dream. It can only be solved by the war of all against 
all. The poor will only become free and property owners 
if they revolt, rise up. Give them ever so much, they 
will always want more ; for they will want nothing less 
than that they shall be given nothing more." 

If Stirner insists on speaking of a war of all against 
all and recommends this as the only solution of the so- 
cial problem, he insists still more strongly that not a 
single individual should be willing to remain in a position 
where he is forced to accept anything as a gift. And in 
this he is as far as possible from Nietzsche, who applies 
his egoistic principles to the few only. 

Stirner preaches his egoism as a "social" philosophy. 
It is addressed to individuals, but it is to become the 
guiding principle of ail individuals, oY of as many as 
may be, and so is to be the basis of the new society. 
And this social philosophy, when analyzed, becomes iden- 



l6o THE LARGER ASPECTS OF SOCIALISM 

tical with that of the pragmatists and Socialists. With 
both men and women are made the center of all striving 
and thinking, whether in religion, philosophy, science, 
history or sociology. 



VIII 

THE SOCIALIST VIEW OF MORALITY 

Napoleon wanted the State to "supervise moral and 
political opinions." The day for such direct State con- 
trol of thought and speech, if it was ever possible, has 
passed. But the desire of rulers for an indirect or moral 
control is the explanation of all our ethical codes and sys- 
tems. If the ruling classes, through their statesmen, uni- 
versities, editors, and writers, can center public attention 
on futile social and moral theories, they can bring about 
this control negatively. For example, in so far as they 
succeed in polarizing public discussion around a supposed 
opposition between "society" and "the individual," they 
distract attention from real issues. And it is just this 
abstract issue which lies at the root of the so-called 
"social" ethics which is the morality corresponding to 
"State Socialism" in politics, to the conception of soci- 
ety as God in sociology, and to the religion of evolution- 
ism in philosophy and science. 

When Marx formulated the basis of Socialist moral- 
ity he avoided both the abstraction, "society," and the 
abstraction, "the individual," and pointed out that social 
emancipation will not be accomplished "until the real 
individual man discards the abstract citizen of the state 
and realizes that he, as an individual, in his actual life, 
his individual work, his individual relations, is a generic 
being." 

Men are to realize that they are related to society and 

l6j 



l62 THE LARGER ASPECTS OF SOCIALISM 

the race, but they are to realize this great basic truth as 
individuals. This is far from regarding men as mere 
parts of a whole, mere members of society or the race. 
Instead of looking upon society as basic or supreme, 
Marx takes his point of departure from the individual, 
and asks him to become conscious of himself in his social 
and racial relations. 

Since the general acceptance of the evolutionary and 
organic theories of society, another new view of ethics, 
in no necessary contradiction with the "social" theory, 
has been current. If we are told that the moral prob- 
lems of the individual are all subordinated to the prob- 
lems of society, i. e., that all ethics are social, we are told 
with equal frequency that to each period of social evolu- 
tion and each set of geographical or economic condi- 
tions will necessarily correspond a different moral code, 
i. e., that all ethics are "relative." 

But if ethics are relative to societies, they are equally 
relative to individuals, and, as no general or social code 
can take into account the profound differences of indi- 
viduals, this can mean only that no general code is jus- 
tifiable. This implies a revolution in morality so pro- 
found that we are unable to grasp more than the smallest 
part of its effects. For it practically sweeps away all 
previous moral philosophy. 

The relativity of ethics to changing social conditions, 
on the one hand, and to individuals, on the other, leads 
us to an interpretation of human actions the direct oppo- 
site of that which has been taught to us by all the ethical 
systems of the past and of the present day. The ques- 
tion is : Does this radical relativity give us the last word 
in ethics ; does it promise to satisfy the requirements of 
a Socialist society? 

Boas, paraphrasing Westermarck, shows how even 
murder must be regarded in this radically relative light ; 



THE SOCIALIST VIEW OF MORALITY 163 

"The person who slays an enemy in revenge fou 
wrongs done, a youth who kills his father before he gets 
decrepit in order to enable him to continue a vigorous 
life in the world to come, a father who kills his child as 
a sacrifice for the welfare of his people, act from such 
entirely different motives, that psychologically a com- 
parison of their activities does not seem permissible. It 
would seem much more proper to compare the murder 
of an enemy in revenge with destruction of his property 
for the same purpose, or to compare the sacrifice of a 
child on behalf of the tribe with any other action per- 
formed on account of strong altruistic motives, than to 
base our comparison on the common concept of murder." 
( Westermarck. ) 1 

But this wholly relative view of ethics, which is now 
accepted by most scientists, historians, and philosophers, 
is by no means that demanded by the most modern 
philosophy of all, pragmatism. We are here treading 
on very similar ground to that which we went over in 
treating of the interpretation of history or of the evolu- 
tion theory. The relative moralists forget the limitations 
of morality itself, due to the fact that it deals primarily 
with individuals and individuals' motives of conduct. In 
explaining and weighing individual motives, everything 
that the relative school of ethics claims is justified. But 
there is no reason why, in the course of our analysis, we 
should stop at this point. The motive of the individual, 
it is true, is to be explained only as these scientific mor- 
alists explain it. The social and economic system ac- 
counts for the moral code. But this does not prevent us 
from seeing that, from the point in social evolution 
which we have now attained, a moral code may itself be 
judged as morally superior or inferior, together with the 
social system and the corresponding types, with which 
it forms a single whole. We may say, then, from the 



164 THE LARGER ASPECTS OF SOCIALISM 

standpoint of our time (and as creatures of our time, we 
can have no other standpoint) that a given system of 
ethics under given conditions may be bad, and that its 
effect on the individual and society may be bad. 

In other words, we may judge the moral value of a 
code of morals by its evil effects on societies and indi- 
viduals. The mere fact that this code has in turn a 
further explanation, which aids us to understand it, does 
not prevent us from so judging it. We gain nothing by 
trying to take an eternal view of the problems of all 
societies. We gain everything by firmly placing our- 
selves at the point of view' of our own times, or as far 
ahead of our times as we can see without mere specula- 
tion. We can understand the relation of our times to 
others without forgetting that it is our business to main- 
tain and defend our outlook and to look at everything 
from the point of view of our own problems — after we 
have made our own problems as broad and our view as 
far-sighted as we are capable of doing. 

From the pragmatic and Socialist standpoint morality 
can be neither wholly absolute nor wholly relative. 
Moral generalizations, like all others, are relative to time, 
place and human beings. But to a given human being or 
group of human beings at a given time and place a 
moral decision may be all but absolute. 

And, moreover, we must apply the widest and broad- 
est moral standards we have attained to — as far as the 
different social and economic conditions and individual 
capacities allow — to other societies and other times than 
our own. 

At least we must go as far toward an absolute ethics 
as the zoologists and ethnologists of our time, who are 
teaching us that primitive races and even animals are 
guided to some extent by social instincts. Kautsky ar- 
gues that "what is specifically human in morality (as dis- 



THE SOCIALIST VIEW OF MORALITY 165 

tinct from the social instinct which we share with ani- 
mals), the moral codes, is subject to conditional 
change." 2 But he also says that "only the lack of these 
social impulses and virtues which man has inherited 
from the social animals is to be regarded as absolute 
immorality." 3 

To Kautsky the absence of consciousness in an action 
seems to imply an inferior degree of morality or immor- 
ality. It is certainly true that the lack of a complicated 
state of society among even primitive communities, and 
the corresponding absence of clearly conscious moral 
ideas, means a lesser moral as well as a lesser intellectual 
development. But if the morality involved in the social 
impulse is not so highly developed as conscious moral- 
ity is, it is deeper and more nearly involves the whole 
personality. While an inability to grasp subtle and com- 
plex moral truths implies only crudity or simplicity or 
perversion in the deficient individual, provided he has 
been properly educated, the lack of social instincts indi- 
cates nothing less than inherent moral backwardness. 
The individual whose unconscious morality only is sound 
may not have risen above the animal, but he whose 
morality is wholly conscious or taught, and who is lack- 
ing in the animal instincts, both social and egoistic, would 
be as far removed from the essentially human as animals 
themselves — though on the other side. As long as moral 
impulses and moral ideas are not in harmony, some- 
thing is wrong. Either man has not risen above the 
animal, or he has lost those moral virtues which even 
the animals possess. 

Kautsky objects to the position of those who declare 
that morality is wholly relative, on two grounds : first, 
because the moral instinct which we inherit from the 
animals and savages is an absolutely indispensable part 
of human nature, and, second, because moral tenets, 



l66 THE LARGER ASPECTS OF SOCIALISM 

which are derived in part from these instincts and in part 
from economic and social conditions of a given stage of 
society, also have a high degree of permanence. Morals 
are not to be judged as relative exclusively to the stage 
of social development, or as relative exclusively to in- 
dividuals. For Kautsky, like most other Socialists, in- 
sists that "despite all social differences, the main outlines 
of class rule in human society have always been the 
same." 4 The moral ideals of all historic periods and 
countries have partaken, in varying degrees, of the same 
wrong. Kautsky admits that there is no moral law in- 
dependent of time and place. But all through the writ- 
ten history of mankind certain problems have continued 
the same, and the same moral ideals have been the result. 

The tendency to look upon ethics as so wholly rela- 
tive as to lead to a non-moral view of history has be- 
come almost universal among the educated, and has even 
led some Socialists into accepting a doctrine which would 
wholly undermine their position. The Socialist view may 
be that of Kautsky, that the present moral code is similar 
in some respects to that of all the historical civilizations, 
even those of thousands of years ago, only because there 
has always been class rule. But to recognize no common 
moral principle at all that can be applied to both past and 
present would be to remove the bond of human sympathy 
that alone gives history any value. It is one thing to 
take a non-partizan view, it is quite another to take a 
non-human one; and to live without moral feeling is to 
live without human feeling. 

It might seem that the "evolutionary" justification of 
the past, so common to-day, arises not out of too little 
but out of too great sympathy. Formerly we were un- 
able to see the surrounding and underlying causes that 
now help us to understand war, slavery, feudalism, and 
despotism. And now that we understand these earlier 



THE SOCIALIST VIEW OF MORALITY 167 

stages of society better it might be concluded that our 
feeling toward them has become more deeply sympathetic 
than it was. But if, in our new understanding of condi- 
tions, we go so far as actually to justify without discrimi- 
nation, then our attitude is no better than the old one of 
indiscriminate blame. For we are now inclined to for- 
give the most profound and essential weakness of earlier 
times. 

But the chief assumption of the ethical culturists and 
other typically advanced "social" moralists of our time, 
that the human race is to be conceived as God, is the 
reverse of relative. For, while all actions are valued 
relatively to the supposedly firmly established laws of 
social evolution, John Stuart Mill's principle, which de- 
manded that ethics should be relative to the development 
of every individual, is entirely disregarded. 

It is assumed very simply that, since society is more 
important than the single individual, it is also more im- 
portant than all individuals, and that all individual prob- 
lems can be disposed of by taking the social standpoint. 
But, according to a profounder social philosophy, society 
also needs every individual, and every individual if well 
developed should have something new and distinct to 
contribute to society. And in order to give the best serv- 
ice to society the individual must develop himself, for 
every individual differs so profoundly from every other 
that not even all society can solve his problems. 

Indeed the difficulties of this new social simplification 
of all the problems of life are as insuperable as were 
those of altruism. If "the welfare of society," or "the 
evolution of humanity" is to guide us, who is to say what 
society or humanity really require? Evidently some 
persons will develop a greater capacity and a greater 
authority in this matter than any others, and if the new 
"sociocratic" moral code is accepted they will be its 



l68 THE LARGER ASPECTS OF SOCIALISM 

priests. And is there sufficient ground for supposing that 
they will be altogether different from the priests who 
have guided the theocratic oligarchies of the past? 
Moreover, is it not inevitable that a great number of in- 
dividuals will always have advanced beyond society as 
a whole so that society will have more to learn from their 
ethical code than they from the code of society? And 
if we cannot foresee the great and inspiring creative 
works of individual genius, how can we expect to lay 
down rules for the far greater creative work of general 
human progress? 

Sociocratic ethics have usually been rejected by So- 
cialists. Kautsky shows that this social principle, far 
from being advanced, was the one followed by primitive 
men in their hard and fast morality of custom, and even 
by animals. Kautsky reasons that since the social im- 
pulse upon which such morality is based is instinctive and 
not intelligent it may lead to an excessive obedience as 
well as a desirable devotion to the common interest — 
"the moral law in us could lead our intellect astray just 
as any other impulse (could) ; in itself it is neither a 
product of wisdom nor does it produce wisdom." 5 
He points out that impulses are not necessarily to be 
followed simply because they are natural, since even the 
most natural and social impulses interfere with one an- 
other, and he will not allow the unconscious social im- 
pulse to become automatically a conscious and absolute 
moral law. 

The German Socialist writers, like Kautsky, oppose 
the sociocratic view, but the general opinion of the day 
is clearly developing along sociocratic lines, and includes 
many so-called Socialists. J. R. MacDonald, for in- 
stance, represents a view very widespread among English 
Socialists when in his "Socialism and Government" he 
practically inverts the proposition of Kant, that the in- 



THE SOCIALIST VIEW OF MORALITY 169 

dividual is not a means but an end and says that "in 
the eyes of the state the individual is but a means to that 
far-off divine event to which the whole creation 
moves." 6 If the individual is a means here is a fine op- 
portunity for a new sociocratic priesthood to tell us what 
the far-off goal of humanity is and to apply it to the in- 
dividual whether he likes it or not. And already this 
tendency is rapidly developing. "The state does not 
concern itself primarily with man as a possessor of 
rights," says MacDonald, "but with man as a doer of 
duties." 7 And he makes himself perfectly explicit when 
he says that even the franchise should only be granted 
for purposes of state, an old teaching of the "benevo- 
lent despotisms" of the eighteenth century. 

Another widespread idea which shows the popularity 
of sociocracy is the use of "efficiency" as a standard of 
morals. The general idea seems to be that while altru- 
ism or some other idealistic principle may hold in some 
matters "efficiency" should be supreme in others. But 
Professors Dewey and Tufts point out that the word 
"efficiency," on the whole, means nothing less than "per- 
sonal success, wealth, power obtained in competitive vic- 
tory." 8 It is not an ideal of what ought to be at all, but 
merely an idealization of what is. 

Sociocratic ethics is the moral system of "State So- 
cialism." Instead of demanding greater scope for the 
individual it urges more coercive laws. But the best 
opinion of the age as well as that of the Socialists is 
that laws are already too coercive. Dewey and Tufts, 
for example, urge that compulsory legislation should 
limit itself to protective measures, to the establishment 
of standards below which it will not allow the anti-social 
individual to fall, that the purpose of such laws should 
not be to advance society, which should be left entirely 
to the free will of the individual, but merely to protect it: 



170 THE LARGER ASPECTS OF SOCIALISM 

"If the vice of the criminal and of the coarsely selfish 
man is to disturb the aims and the good of others; if 
the vice of the ordinary egoist, and of every man, upon 
his egoistic side, is to neglect the interests of others; 
the vice of the social leader, of the reformer, of the 
philanthropist and the specialist in every worthy cause 
of science, of art, of politics is to seek ends which pro- 
mote the social welfare in ways which fail to engage 
the active interest and co-operation of others. The con- 
ception of conferring the good upon others, or at least 
of attaining it for them, which is our inheritance from 
the aristocratic civilizations of the past, is so deeply 
embodied in religious, political and charitable institutions 
and in moral teachings, that it dies hard. Many a man, 
feeling himself justified by the social character of his 
ultimate aim (it may be economic, or educational, or 
political), is genuinely confused or exasperated by the 
increasing antagonism and resentment which he evokes 
because he has not enlisted in his pursuit of the 'common' 
end the freely co-operative activities of others. This 
co-operation must be the root principle of the morals 
of democracy. It must be, however, confessed that it 
has as yet made little progress.'' 9 

If "moral democracy" demands free cooperation and 
the minimum of coercive legislation, social democracy is 
still more insistent in this demand. The ethics of social 
democracy do not teach, like the ethics of "State Social- 
ism" or sociocracy, that individuals are mere parts of one 
greater whole, or that society is held together by a merely 
mechanical solidarity. They hold rather, with that very 
spiritual statement attributed to Christ, that "we are all 
members of one body and of one another/' If we are 
merely parts of a whole then indeed our functions must 
be merely to submit to the higher authority. But if we 
are equally parts of one another there can be no higher 
authority than ourselves. 



THE SOCIALIST VIEW OF MORALITY 171 

We are not interrelated merely as separate cogs of a 
great machine or as the separate cells and organs of 
the body. We are organically united in an even deeper 
sense, for our personalities are actually created and 
molded by others and by the humanity of the past, while 
we find our only possible expression by extending our 
own influence in the same way. We are bound together 
in an infinitely more intimate and at the same time an in- 
finitely freer way than merely by the subdivision of 
labor. 

Maeterlinck, a firm believer in a free society, quotes 
the sociocrat as saying to the democrat : 

"Do not believe that the multitude is right, that a 
lie stated by a hundred mouths ceases to be a lie, that 
an error proclaimed by a band of blind men becomes 
a truth which nature will sanction. Do not believe either 
that by setting yourselves to the number of ten thousand 
who do not know against one who knows, you will come 
to anything, or that you will compel the humblest of 
the eternal laws to follow you, to abandon him who 
recognized it. No, the law will remain in its place, with 
the wise man who discovered it, and so much the worse 
for you if you go away without accepting it! You will 
one day come across it on your road, and all that you 
have done while you thought that you were avoiding it 
will turn and rise up against you!" 

For the democrat Maeterlinck replies : 

"Such words as these, addressed to the crowd, are very 
true ; but it is not less true that all this becomes efficacious 
only after it has been experienced and lived through. In 
those problems in which all life's enigmas converge, the 
crowd which is wrong is almost always justified as 
against the wise man who is right. It refuses to believe 
him on his word. It feels dimly that behind the most 
evident abstract truths there are numberless living truths 



172 THE LARGER ASPECTS OF SOCIALISM 

which no brain can foresee, for they need time, reality 
and men's passions to develop their work. That is why, 
whatever warning we may give it, the crowd insists 
before all that the experiment shall be tried. Can we 
say that in cases where the crowd has obtained the 
experiment it was wrong to insist upon it?" 10 

Maeterlinck concludes that democracy would be jus- 
tified "even if it had done no more than to create, as in 
America and France, that sense of real equality which is 
there breathed as a more human and purer atmosphere 
and which seems new and almost prodigious to those who 
come from elsewhere." No amount of wisdom is jus- 
tified if it proposes, as sociocracy does, to substitute itself 
in any way for actual living or the free development of 
the individual according to his own ideas and desires. 
If wisdom can reach the individual, can save him any 
waste of life in needless and costly experiments, then it 
is well, but he gains nothing from coercion from above, 
even at the hands of the wisest and most benevolent of 
"supermen." 

Socialism objects to the separation of the individual 
and society even for the purpose of discussion — unless 
under the most thorough precautions. The individual 
implies society, and society implies the individual. Both 
may indeed be considered as parts of a larger whole, 
humanity; but even in speaking of humanity we must 
remember that this new generalization is merely a con- 
venience of speech. Stirner warned us more than half 
a century ago against giving any reality to our general- 
izations no matter how broad they may be, and the prag- 
matism of to-day would insist that the generalization, 
"humanity," like all others, has more or less validity ac- 
cording to how it is used. 

As H. G. Wells says : "We cannot put Humanity into 
a museum or dry it for examination ; our one single still 



THE SOCIALIST VIEW OF MORALITY 1 73 

living specimen is all history, all anthropology, and the 
fluctuating world of men. There is no satisfactory means 
of dividing it and nothing else in the real world with 
which to compare it. We have only the remotest ideas 
of its 'life cycle' and a few relics of its origin and dreams 
of its destiny." X1 The use of the phrase "fluctuating 
world of men" shows that Wells is not subordinating the 
word Humanity to the visible reality on which his eyes 
are fixed. And this habit of actual vision is the scientific 
attitude, which alone gives us any realistic view of social 
and moral problems. 

The pedantic division of life between the "individual" 
and "society" or "humanity" is no mere accident or 
natural error of the mind. It is a result of the radical di- 
vision of society into the two classes, the rulers and the 
ruled, the former well-to-do, educated and in the pos- 
session of practically all of the political power, the latter 
comparatively poor, comparatively ignorant, and polit- 
ically almost powerless. The highest philosophical and 
ethical authorities of the time, like Professors Dewey 
and Tufts, recognize this as clearly as do the Socialists 
themselves. 

"Spiritual resources," they write, "are practically as 
much the possession of a special class, in spite of educa- 
tional advance, as are material resources. This fact 
reacts upon the chief educative agencies — science, art 
and religion. Knowledge in its ideas, language, and 
appeals is forced into corners; it is over specialized, 
technical and esoteric because of its isolation. Its lack 
of intimate connection with social practice leads to an 
intense and elaborate over-training which increases its 
own remoteness. Only when science and philosophy are 
one with literature, the art of successful communication, 
and vivid intercourse are they liberal in effect." 12 

A good illustration of the class character of "socio- 



174 THE LARGER ASPECTS OF SOCIALISM 

cratic" and "evolutionary" ethics is to be found in the 
writings of Professor William James, for example in 
his essay on "The Moral Equivalent of War." Taking 
the biological view that the characteristics of men are 
to a very large degree inherited, James says that the man 
of to-day inherits "all the innate pugnacity and all the 
love of glory of his ancestors," and that "our ances- 
tors have bred pugnacity into our bone and marrow, ant' 
thousands of years won't breed it out of us." I have 
dealt with the fallacy that lies in this biological and so- 
cial theory of the inheritance of traits which are visibly 
bred into individuals by their early training and social en- 
vironment. James, however, uses this false assumption 
as the very foundation for proposed institutions which 
would practically amount to a reorganization of society 
in the form of "State Socialism." 

James himself gives the true and widely different ex- 
planation of militarism in this same essay, that in the 
times when war was almost continuous, "a pure pug- 
nacity and love of glory came to mingle with the more 
fundamental appetite for plunder." 

"It was this more fundamental appetite for plunder," 
he continues, "which was confined in large measure to 
those classes which were in a position to plunder and to 
profit by it, that accounts for war, and not any inherited 
traits whatever. The conditions, as I have already 
shown, invited plunder, and the lack of any stable society 
permitted it. These conditions existed from generation 
to generation, and the same opportunities and tempta- 
tions were open to the descendants as had been open to 
their ancestors. 

"Every up-to-date dictionary should say that 'peace' 
and 'war' mean the same thing, now in posse, now in 
actu. It may even reasonably be said that the intensely 
sharp competitive preparation for war by the nations is 
the real war, permanent, unceasing; and that, the battles 



THE SOCIALIST VIEW OF MORALITY I75 

are only a sort of public verification of the military 
mastery gained during the 'peace' interval." (My ital- 
ics.) 

The so-called pugnacious instincts, love of glory, and 
so forth, are kept alive and even artificially revived and 
stimulated by the profits that are to be obtained from 
war. This explanation is purely economic and social, 
and in no way biological. 

But let us note now what a complete State Socialist 
structure James erects on the assumption of an in- 
herited pugnacity. He makes it the foundation for a 
theory of human nature which practically leads to noth- 
ing less than a military state. The very title to his 
essay, "A Moral Equivalent of War," shows that he is 
thoroughly conscious of the essentially military character 
of his proposed society, even though he wants war itself 
to be abolished : "War has been the only force that can 
discipline a whole community, and, until an equivalent 
discipline is organized, I believe that war will have its 
way." But, from the point of view of Socialism, mili- 
tary discipline is infinitely a greater evil than war itself, 
for it obviously means the knell of individual freedom. 

James then proceeds to construct a society of the 
future, which is to be a kind of a benevolent God, tak- 
ing care of the individual, while preserving and strength- 
ening class-rule. Its psychological basis is shown in the 
following passages : 

"All the qualities of a man acquire dignity when he 
knows that the service of the collectivity that owns him 
needs them. ... In the more or less socialistic 
future toward which mankind seems to be drifting, we 
must still subject ourselves collectively to those severities 
that answer to our real position upon this only partly 
hospitable globe. . . . Martial virtues must be the 
enduring cement ; intrepidity, contempt of softness, sur- 



I76 THE LARGER ASPECTS OF SOCIALISM 

render of private interest, obedience to command, must 
still remain the rock upon which conscription of the 
whole youthful population to form for a certain number 
of years a part of the army enlisted against nature. 
. . . To coal and iron mines, to freight trains, to 
fishing fleets in December, to dish-washing, clothes-wash- 
ing, and window-washing, to road-building and tunnel- 
making, to foundries and stoke-holes, and to the frames 
of skyscrapers, would our gilded youths be drafted off, 
according to their choice, to get the childishness knocked 
out of them, and to come back into society with healthier 
sympathies and soberer ideas. They would have paid 
their blood-tax, done their part in the immemorial human 
warfare against nature." (James' "The Moral Equiva- 
lent of War"; my italics.) 

James also quotes the arguments of H. G. Wells in 
favor of the order and discipline of military training: 
"Here, at least, a man is supposed to win a promotion 
by self-forgetfulness, and not by self-seeking." There is 
no doubt that loyalty to the military purpose, as against 
all other purposes of humanity, and all the infinite pos- 
sibilities of individual self-expression and development, 
is inherent in militarism. But the very "self-forget- 
fulness" of militarism is its deepest evil. Cruelty and 
brutality are merely superficial defects; the annihilation 
of individual freedom and development, whether volun- 
tary, as for most officers, or compulsory as for most 
privates, is its essential feature. The "universal mili- 
tary duty" that Wells and James favor is a return to 
the most primitive conception of customary or tribal 
morality and also to the absolute ethics implied in the 
"categorical imperative" of Kant. But there is no 
doubt that James here voices one of the most powerful 
tendencies of our time, and that something similar to 
universal conscription may prevail in the "State Social- 
ist" society that lies between us and Socialism. 



THE SOCIALIST VIEW OF MORALITY 1JJ 

Our "evolutionary" and "social" moralists fully ap- 
preciate the differences between the ethics correspond- 
ing to the economic systems of various epochs, but not 
the differing ethics of the various economic classes that 
have hitherto existed within every epoch. They forget 
that there never has been any generally applicable social 
ethics, and cannot be to-day, for the simple reason that 
the divisions between the various social classes are too 
profound to allow them to be governed by a single code. 
Even class ethics fail to fit the individual, though in 
contrast to social ethics they have evolved into more or 
less consistent codes based on definite social policies — 
like that of the military organization just referred to. 

The relativity of ethics to the individual is recog- 
nized by James when he says that there must be novelty 
in the ideal, and that ideals are relative to the lives that 
entertain them. In other words, ideals of conduct must 
have regard, both to the present conditions of the indi- 
vidual and to his past experience. Yet, in this same 
volume, James ignores the relativity of ethics to social 
classes, when he says that only the performance of 
good actions is to be taught, and not the non-perform- 
ance of evil actions, and that the individual ought to 
guard himself from inferior temptations : 

"It is clear that in general we ought, whenever we can, 
to employ the method of inhibition by substitution. He 
whose life is based on the word 'no,' who tells the truth 
because a lie is wicked, and who has constantly to grapple 
with his envious and cowardly and mean propensities, 
is in an inferior situation in every respect to what he 
would be if the love of truth and magnanimity posi- 
tively possessed him from the outset, and he felt no 
inferior temptations." 13 

This will become a truth of the utmost importance in 
a society without classes. But to-day such "inferior situ- 



178 THE LARGER ASPECTS OF SOCIALISM 

ations" are notoriously increased by poverty, disease, and 
other inferior conditions. James even admits that the 
ideal he has in mind is that of the "born gentleman." 
And so we find with nearly all the teachers of "social" 
and "evolutionary" morality. 

The morality of Socialism is equally opposed to the 
moral system of individualistic capitalism and that of 
"State Socialism." Both are descended from a long 
chain of similar systems, and have usually existed side 
by side. Ethical individualism has existed throughout 
history in what Spencer calls the religion of enmity, be- 
came dominant in the idealization of free competition, 
was embodied in "science" after Darwin's "survival of 
the fittest" hypothesis, and reached its most general form 
in the theory of the complete relativity of ethics. The 
ethics of "State Socialism" were formulated at least as 
early as Plato's Republic, were repeated by Paul, 
Luther, Calvin, and all those for whom society and the 
existing social system were sacred, and reached their 
most general form in the absolute ethics of Kant. All 
altruism, in denying existing class lines, was simply 
"State Socialist" morality in a negative form. Where 
the two systems could conveniently be taught together 
the first was reserved for the upper classes, the second 
for the masses. Where a single system was demanded 
the "ethics of amity" were taught, but they bore with 
unequal weight on the two classes on account of the in- 
equality of their conditions. 

Socrates and the disciples through whom he has come 
to us may, perhaps, be taken as the originators of this 
accepted moral philosophy. Or, to speak more accu- 
rately, the age when mankind was first organizing the 
use of the Mediterranean as a natural means of com- 
munication and commerce marked the beginning of our 
present civilization, and therefore of our present morals, 



THE SOCIALIST VIEW OF MORALITY 1 79 

A number of the pupils of Socrates, such as Alcibi- 
ades and Critias, were inspired by the same worldly 
motives which had governed the pupils of his prede- 
cessors, the Sophists. Such pupils had wanted "to 
become renowned in the city," and Plato adds that they 
came to Socrates to prepare them for that purpose. It 
has been generally admitted that the Sophists obeyed 
the wishes of these pupils and taught what was expected 
of them; it has not generally been seen that Socrates 
did the same thing. Both were governed largely by 
political motives. Plato was confessedly in complete 
opposition to the plutocratic element of Athenian society 
called the democracy, and in favor of the older land- 
owning aristocracy. But the day of commercial plu- 
tocracy had arrived for Athens, and the land-owning 
aristocracy could regain control, even for a moment, 
only by a very aggressive and constructive policy. Plato, 
with such an aristocratic policy in view, sought for either 
a benevolent despot or benevolent oligarchs, who alone 
could carry it out without concessions to the middle 
classes, and he finally succeeded in finding the despot 
in Dionysius, of Syracuse. Plato despised the greatest 
of Athenian statesmen, Themistocles and Pericles, as 
"mere servants of the city, supplying Athens with docks, 
harbors, walls, and such like follies, but making no 
provision for the moral improvement of the citizens." 
It was his function to supply this morality — of a kind 
to satisfy any far-sighted ambitious tyrant or oligarch. 

When Socrates interpreted the precept inscribed in the 
temple of Delphos, "Know thyself," as meaning "Know 
what sort of a man thou art, and what are thy capacities 
in reference to human use," he provided a basis for an 
ethical system perhaps more modern than the best known 
teachings of the Old and New Testaments. "Well do- 
ing consisted," says Grote, of Socrates' ethics, "in doing 



l80 THE LARGER ASPECTS OF SOCIALISM 

a thing well after having learned it and practiced it." 
"The best man and the most beloved by the Gods," 
says Socrates, "is he who as a husbandman performs 
well the duties of husbandry, as a surgeon, those of 
medical art, ... in political life, his duty toward the 
commonwealth. But the man who does nothing well is 
never useful — nor agreeable to the gods." 14 Is this not 
an altogether more positive, instructive, and modern pre- 
cept than those which are usually drawn from the pre- 
vailing religious teachings? 

But Socrates' limitations were such as to make his 
teachings invaluable also for class purposes. For while 
he taught this thoroughly practical basis of ethics, at 
the same time he did superstition the enormous service 
of separating philosophy entirely from physical science. 
To be sure, ethics and physics had been entangled and 
both of them thereby confused, but Socrates went to the 
extreme of teaching that physics was an inscrutable and 
divine mystery to be understood only by the gods. In 
his hands, this revolutionary step did not do as much 
harm as it did later, since he still made man (physical 
and psychic) the center of the universe. But in Plato's 
handling this ignoring of the physical universe resulted in 
building up an absolute philosophy and an absolute ethics 
completely disconnected with the material world, and 
with time and place, i. e., with evolution. If he could 
overlook material change through this philosophy, he 
could easily overlook all change, for psychic evolution is 
less obvious. Now the result of such an absolute ethics 
is always a tendency toward theocracy or some kind of 
absolutism, either a society governed by priests or one 
governed by irresponsible philosophers and benevolent 
despots. For it is evident, if there is a wisdom which 
gives a key to the universe, which applies for all places 
and all times and to all men, that those few who are in 



THE SOCIALIST VIEW OF MORALITY l8l 

possession of this wisdom owe it as a duty to men to 
govern them with or without their consent. 

Plato's prestige is due largely to the utility of most 
of his ideas to rulers. The Sophists had taught upper 
class youths how to succeed in Athens and under the 
conditions that prevailed there. Plato and his successors 
taught a universal art of plausible philosophical reasoning 
that has appealed to the most varied peoples under the 
most varied conditions. This philosophy was so subtle 
and so complex that any member of the ruling class mas- 
tering it could without difficulty adapt it to his purposes 
anywhere. Like the individualistic Protestant creeds of 
the last four centuries it lent itself easily to any and all 
uses, on account of the fact that it was not connected 
with any particular form of hierarchy in government or 
any particular form of church. 

It might be said that any discipline would result in 
the advantage of the class that had first mastered it. 
This is true, and it is one of the facts on which class 
rule is based, but the philosophy of Plato and Socrates 
were peculiarly adapted to the purpose. 

The Greek philosophers separated morality from life 
so as to be able to mould it more conveniently for the 
purposes of the ruling classes. Christian ethics served 
the ruling classes even better by teaching a social ethics 
that were addressed to all alike, and were inevitably more 
effective in making the weak weaker than in restrain- 
ing those in power. The morality of Plato was in dan- 
ger of being understood some day by the people; the 
morality of Paul, intended in the first place to make the 
people better slaves, was, on the contrary, all the more 
efficacious when the time came when it could reach them 
directly, through the printing press. 

It might seem at first that no rational being unless 
under the influence of some anti-social theory could take 



1 82 THE LARGER ASPECTS OF SOCIALISM 

exception to Christ's command : "Love thy neighbor as 
thyself." Nor is anyone likely to question the truth that 
lies in that principle. But to Socialists it is not the 
whole truth, i. e., it is negatively false. The age in which 
this principle was first announced, whether the time of 
Christ, of the Prophet Hillel, or of Confucius, was one 
in which a large part of the population was occupied by 
primitive pastoral or agricultural pursuits, which meant 
that the overwhelming majority of the people were not 
yet thrown into those social classes the very existence of 
which contradicts such a principle. And since modern 
transportation had not developed, the questions, "Who is 
my neighbor?" or "How shall I love him as myself?" 
could not occur. The neighbor was he among the un- 
differentiated mass with which one had most to do, that 
is, he who lived nearest, and this individual's situation 
and needs were those of practically all other individuals, 
including oneself. In modern city life and in modern 
conditions generally, those with whom we have most to 
do, and with whom, by any standard of morals or com- 
mon sense, we ought to have the most to do, are often by 
no means our neighbors ; the types of individuals are in- 
finitely more differentiated, and those who are our neigh- 
bors physically may really be the most remote from us, 
especially when members of the ruling class. 

Every individual on whom we do bestow our sympa- 
thy, or what we formerly termed our "neighborliness" 
must be treated differently. The rule that we should love 
others as we do ourselves becomes in most cases wholly 
insufficient. Others' needs are not only different from 
our own, but so different that one of the first principles 
of ethics is that we should often respect them even when 
we are unable to sympathize with them. 

Then the biblical saying implies that we love our- 
selves, and it follows that in order to do full justice to 



THE SOCIALIST VIEW OF MORALITY 1 83 

others it is necessary that we should love ourselves. Yet 
altruism and devotion to the principle of indiscriminate 
brotherly love seems to make people almost selfless. 
How can such persons be in full sympathy with those who 
are driven or inspired in life by the deepest and most 
passionate desires? 

If we are to stand for brotherly love ; we must know 
in what sense we use the word "love." Stirner 
says : 

"I love men, too, not only some, but all. But I love 
them with a consciousness of egoism ; I love them be- 
cause love makes me happy. I love because loving is 
natural to me, because it pleases me. I know no 'com- 
mand of love.' " 

Altruism translated into the political sphere and 
taught to the masses becomes the doctrine of submission, 
obedience, and servility to rulers. This doctrine was 
among the teachings of Paul (as I have noted) ; it was 
the foundation of the power of the organized church; it 
was strengthened rather than weakened by Luther and 
Calvin during the Reformation; it was held to by the 
great philosopher of the French Revolution, who taught 
that the citizen of his ideal state who preached against 
it should be punished by death, a teaching most influ- 
ential during the Reign of Terror; and finally the same 
dogma reappeared almost intact, though in a slightly dif- 
ferent form, in the teachings of the great German philos- 
ophers during the half century that followed the Revo- 
lution. 

The philosopher who has the greatest influence on all 
the philosophy and ethics of our time, Emanuel Kant, 
was as anti-democratic as Plato or Paul or Luther or 
Calvin. According to his view, the people have the duty 
of standing even the most intolerable, misuse of power 



184 THE LARGER ASPECTS OF SOCIALISM 

by the supreme authority. Kant actually forbids subjects 
to reason about the origin of the supreme power or to 
doubt its right to his obedience. His categorical im- 
perative in the hands of the royalist philosophers of 
Germany was as useful to rulers as any religious dogma 
in the hands of ministers or priests. 

Under the present system both altruistic and egoistic 
behavior are still indispensable. But neither is as pro- 
found a need as cooperation in building up a society in 
which neither shall be necessary. And it is certainly too 
late to erect either into a moral system. 

"The chief advantage that would result from the es- 
tablishment of Socialism," says Oscar Wilde, "is un- 
doubtedly the fact that Socialism would relieve us from 
that sordid necessity of living for others which, in the 
present condition of things, presses so hardly upon al- 
most everybody. 3 ' Under present conditions altruism is 
often a desirable and indispensable virtue, but the con- 
ditions that necessitate altruism cramp and limit the de- 
velopment of man. Wilde points out that "it is much 
more easy to have sympathy with suffering than it is to 
have sympathy with thought." 15 So that we find in our 
time a tremendous development of pity and a great readi- 
ness to protest against extreme outrages and cruelty, 
but only a very slight development or understanding of 
those inspired and creative spirits who would point the 
way in a new society where unnecessary suffering will 
disappear. The best men and women of the time have 
thus been forced to waste their strength, without much 
result as yet, in rebellion, and rebellion, however neces- 
sary, does not produce the highest types of man : "Most 
personalities have been obliged to be rebels. Half their 
strength has been wasted in friction." Byron and Shel- 
ley are Wilde's examples. 

In the society of the future instead of asking people 



THE SOCIALIST VIEW OF MORALITY 185 

to be alike, as every moral system tends to do, we will 
like them "because they are different." "The soul of 
man under Socialism" will look forward into the possi- 
bilities of future development instead of turning back 
to the past, and it will need no moral code : "For it will 
not worry itself about the past, nor care whether things 
happened or did not happen. Nor will it admit any laws 
but its own laws; nor any authority but its own author- 
ity. Yet it will love those who sought to intensify it, 
and speak often of them. And of these Christ was 
one." 15 

In working toward a free society the individual does 
not secure as full self-development as he will when work- 
ing in a free society. But in neither case does he either 
sacrifice himself for others (or for society) nor sacrifice 
others (or society) for himself. 

Morality will some day consist not in refraining from 
doing this or that, nor even in doing positive acts in 
accord with moral precepts, but in doing one's work, and 
doing it well, with all such incidental life and activity as 
naturally grow out of it. 

"To assume right functional relation to society," says 
Mrs. Gilman, "is to assume right functional relation to 
one another. Not charity, not philanthropy, not benevo- 
lence, not self-immolation or self-sacrifice or self any- 
thing; but simply to find and hold our proper place in 
the work in which and by which we live. To do one's 
right work involves all the virtues." 16 

It is unquestionably the rule among Socialists to look 
at social and individual problems, whenever possible, 
in this wholly constructive spirit and to center discussion 
entirely around proposed social changes rather than mere 
negative judgments as to right and wrong. 

Democracy means, according to Dewey and Tufts, 



l86 THE LARGER ASPECTS OF SOCIALISM 

"the effective embodiment of the moral ideal" and "the 
development of all the social capacities of every indi- 
vidual member of society." From the pragmatic and So- 
cialist standpoint there is and can be no separate science 
of ethics aside from the general movement of social prog- 
ress. As Dewey said in a recent address : 

"There is no separate body of moral rules; no separate 
system of motive powers; no separate subject-matter 
of moral knowledge, and hence no such thing as an 
isolated ethical science. If the business of morals is 
not to speculate upon man's final end and upon an ulti- 
mate standard of right, it is to utilize physiology, an- 
thropology and psychology to discover all that can be 
discovered of man, his organic powers and propensities. 
If its business is not to search for the one separate moral 
motive, it is to concentrate all the instrumentalities of the 
social arts, of law, of education, economics and political 
science upon the construction of intelligent methods of 
improving the common lot." 

The problem of ethics involves the whole problem of 
social evolution, and it is therefore impossible to con- 
struct any general ethical system except on a basis so 
broad that omniscience would be required to give it any 
scientific validity: 

"There is no separate body of moral rules ; no separate 
system of motive powers; no separate subject matter of 
moral knowledge, and hence no such thing as an isolated 
ethical science." 

Dewey reaches this conclusion by showing inductively 
the intimate relation of ethics with all other human prob- 
lems. But he also deduces it from his pluralistic con- 
ception of the universe : 

"The proper business of intelligence is discrimination 
of multiple and present goods and of the varied im- 



THE SOCIALIST VIEW OF MORALITY 1 87 

mediate means of their realization ; not search for the 
one remote aim. The progress of biology has accus- 
tomed our minds to the notion that intelligence is not 
an outside power presiding supremely but statically over 
the desires and efforts of man, but that it is a method 
of adjustment of capacities and conditions within specific 
situations. . . . Theory having learned what it can- 
not do, is made responsible for the better performance of 
what needs to be done, and what only a broadly equipped 
intelligence can do ; to study the conditions out of which 
come the obstacles and the resources of adequate life, 
and to develop and test the ideas which, as working 
hypotheses, may be used to diminish the causes of evil 
and buttress and expand the sources of good. This 
program is indeed vague, but only unfamiliarity with it 
could lead one to the conclusion that it is less vague 
than the idea that there is a single moral ideal and a 
single moral motive force." (My italics.) 17 

We must note in this passage the use of the plural 
in each case. Dewey speaks not of the general good, 
but of present goods adapted to specific situations, 
not of human nature, but of human nature under certain 
special conditions. Only that act has moral worth 
"which comes through holding powers concentrated upon 
a positive end." This positive end must always consist 
of some participation in the progress of humanity, so 
that the problem of the value of each individual act be- 
comes the problem of its relation to social progress in 
general : 

"Our conceptions of moral education have been too 
narrow, too formal, and too pathological. We have as- 
sociated the term ethical with certain special acts which 
are labeled virtues and are set off from the mass of 
other acts, and are still more divorced from the habitual 
images and motives of the children performing them. 
Moral instruction is thus associated with teaching about 



l88 THE LARGER ASPECTS OF SOCIALISM 

these particular virtues, or with instilling certain senti- 
ments in regard to them. The moral has been conceived 
in too goody-goody a way. Ultimate moral motives 
and forces are nothing more or less than social intelli- 
gence — the power of observing and comprehending social 
situations — and social power — trained capacities of con- 
trol — at work in the service of social interest and 
aims." 18 

In adapting this radically relative view, Dewey by no 
means becomes an "evolutionary" fatalist and apologist 
for the ethical systems of the past and present, but points 
out that they have not even fitted the societies which 
have evolved them. All ethics since the beginning of 
written history have been class ethics. This fact is used 
by Dewey to show the impossibility of an abstract or uni- 
versal ethical system, even of temporary validity: 

"The most generously imaginative soul of all philoso- 
phy could not far outrun the institutional practices of his 
people and his times. This might have warned his 
successors of the danger of deserting the sober path of 
a critical discernment of the better and the worse within 
contemporary life for the more exciting adventure of 
a final determination of absolute good and evil. It might 
have taught the probability that some brute residuum or 
unrationalized social habit would be erected into an 
apotheosis of pure reason." 19 

Not only have the ethical systems of the past been 
strictly limited by the interests of those who conceived 
them, but the same thing is true to-day : 

"The conscious articulation of genuine modern ten- 
dencies has yet to come, and until it comes the ethic of 
our own life must remain undeveloped." 

Such an ethic Dewey says would be experimental, 
would not be a system, but simply a constant study of in- 



THE SOCIALIST VIEW OF MORALITY 1 89 

dividual and social problems, in the light of human evo- 
lution, with a constant reformulation of conclusions as 
society progressed. 

"A people perishes when it confounds its duty with 
the general concept of duty," says Nietzsche. "Nothing 
ruins more profoundly or more intrinsically than their 
impersonal duty or their sacrifice before the Moloch of 
abstraction. ... I wonder that Kant's categorical 
imperative has not been felt as dangerous to life." So- 
cialists, too, feel the danger of the exaltation of any 
moral code, even of the broadest and most philosophical, 
even the "evolutionary" criticism or the "social" code of 
to-day. They insist that morality rises out of and has 
its end in social progress ; that it cannot be utilized or 
understood by those who are out of relation with the 
social activities and the social movement of the times. 

"The general duty of a man, his existence being se- 
cured," says H. G. Wells, "is to educate and chiefly to 
educate and develop himself. It is his duty to live, to 
make all he can out of himself and life, to get full ex- 
perience, to make himself fine and perceiving and ex- 
pressive, to render his experience and perceptions hon- 
estly and helpfully to others. And in particular he has to 
educate himself and others with himself in Socialism. 
He has to make and keep this idea of synthetic human 
effort and of conscious constructive effort clear first to 
himself and then clear in the general mind. 

"Correlated with one's own intellectual activity, part 
of it and growing out of it for almost everyone, is in- 
tellectual work with and upon others. By teaching we 
learn. Not to communicate one's thoughts to others, 
to keep one's thoughts to oneself as people say, is either 
cowardice or pride. It is a form of sin. It is a duty 
to talk, teach, explain, write, lecture, read and listen. 
Every truly religious man, every good Socialist, is a 
propagandist." 20 



I90 THE LARGER ASPECTS OF SOCIALISM 

Socialists say to the individual, not that he ought 
to serve society, but that the meaning and object of his 
existence is consciously or unconsciously to serve society, 
and that he can express and develop himself in no other 
way. 



IX 

NIETZSCHE AND THE NEW MORALITY 

None but the great writers have ever succeeded in 
formulating humanity's ideals, and it cannot be other- 
wise when these ideals become Socialistic. Until the cre- 
ative writer with the "new imagination" and prophetic 
vision required for this great task appears, Socialist 
ideals will remain vague and scattered. The Socialist 
society may be half established and the Socialist philoso- 
phy may be accepted in many directions before Socialist 
ideals are given any generally accepted expression. 

For the philosophy that directs our lives, as distinct 
from our philosophy of the universe, for our vision of 
the future man toward whom we strive, we are depend- 
ent on literature. The great writer cannot arbitrarily 
force any new ideal upon us, but he is great largely be- 
cause he is more sensitive than others to the deeper 
forces in the men of his time and has a greater mastery 
over their import and meaning ; his ideal is our ideal — 
of which we had not yet become conscious. 

Many great Socialists have been able writers, and 
many great writers have been thoroughgoing Socialists, 
but we still await the great Socialist-writer. Maurice 
Maeterlinck, Maxim Gorky, William Morris and Anatole 
France no more satisfy this requirement than did Karl 
Marx. The writer we are awaiting need not have Marx's 
mastery of politics, economics, philosophy, and history, 
but he must have Marx's prophetic vision — and he must 

191 



192 THE LARGER ASPECTS OF SOCIALISM 

have even greater literary power. If he is not a poet, he 
must have the poet's gifts : inspiration, the most catho- 
lic human sympathy, passionate devotion to his mission, 
complete abandon — all carrying him beyond the possi- 
bility of merely logical formulas. 

In the meanwhile this writer has not arrived, and it 
might seem that we are reduced to piecing together our 
Socialist ideals from the great Socialists who can write 
and the great writers who are Socialists. But there is a 
better way. What we are seeking is prophetic inspira- 
tion, and the best way to proceed is to follow this type of 
literature in its evolution toward Socialism, even though 
the prophets of to-day are not yet wholly Socialist. A 
broad and intensive study of Tolstoy, remote as he is 
from Socialism, would bring us far toward our goal. 
Ibsen's destructive criticism of individual ideals has in it 
the germs of a Socialist idealism. But Tolstoy's world 
of peasants and nobility keeps him nearer to India and 
China than to European civilization. And Ibsen lived 
almost entirely in the middle classes of private capital- 
ism. 

In view of the new philosophy and the modern social 
movement which subordinates everything to humanity, 
the great and central question to be asked is : What kind 
of man ought to be cultivated, willed, or created — for it 
is possible for us practically to create human character 
if we know what we want. No one has more clearly 
seized and expressed this problem than Friedrich 
Nietzsche, who realized, it will be seen, that it has noth- 
ing to do with the pitiful fallacy on which Eugenics is 
based but opens up infinitely larger horizons. 

"The problem which I here put," says Nietzsche, "is 
not what is to replace mankind in the chain of beings 
(man is an end), but what type of man we are to 
cultivate, we are to will, as the more valuable, the 



NIETZSCHE AND THE NEW MORALITY 193 

more worthy of life, the more certain of the future. 
"This more valuable type has often enough existed 
already, but as a happy accident, as an exception, never 
as willed. It has rather just been the most feared; it 
has hitherto been almost the terror — and out of that 
terror, the reverse type has been willed, cultivated, at- 
tained; the domestic animal, the herding- animal, the 
sickly animal. . . ." (Nietzsche's italics throughout 
all this chapter.) 

It is indeed a reversal of the older standards that is de- 
manded; instead of individuals that conform to a rule, 
individuals who vary most widely; instead of individuals 
who fit easily into social grooves, individuals who require 
and compel the largest and most rapid development of 
society; instead of individuals who repress themselves, 
individuals who assert themselves, though of course in 
the largest and deepest sense. 

Unfortunately Nietzsche still appears to the greater 
part of the English-speaking world, including the Social- 
ists, chiefly as the defender of war and slavery, the oppo- 
nent of woman's advance, and the eulogist of Napoleon 
and Cesare Borgia. It is needless to say that no Social- 
ist can share such views. But we need not consider 
them as being fundamental in Nietzsche's outlook on 
life. Nor are his most abstract doctrines, such as that 
of "the superman," "the will to power," or "the per- 
petual return," by any means the most important part 
of his message. 

In studying Nietzsche we must keep to the pragmatic 
method. His doctrines are undoubtedly the conclusion 
of his thinking, but from the pragmatic standpoint the 
conclusion of a chain of thought is no more its most 
important element than are the last days of a life or the 
finishing strokes of a picture. 

Nietzsche himself, as an artist in the largest sense of 



194 THE LARGER ASPECTS OF SOCIALISM 

the word, was not working primarily toward any conclu- 
sion. Undoubtedly his life and work as a whole had as 
much unity as that of other great writers, but it also had 
more unity in its smallest divisions. Nietzsche's power 
was not only that of a great intellect, but also that of a 
tremendously strong temperament. Nearly all of his 
moods contain him more or less completely; and it was 
no accident that he selected the aphorism as his chief 
mode of writing. 

As we are not interested primarily in the conclusions 
of Nietzsche's work and life any more than he was him- 
self, so also we are not specially concerned with its ori- 
gins. Undoubtedly Nietzsche's family and education, 
the Franco-Prussian war, the recent history of Europe, 
Darwinism, Lutheranism, German metaphysics and 
the poetry and theology and sociology of his time, all had 
a visible influence on his thought. He subjected him- 
self also, with some degree of conscious purpose, to the 
special influence of certain historic periods like that of 
early Greece and the Renaissance, but, since this was 
connected with his work in philology and with his early 
associations, it is not to be taken as an altogether delib- 
erate choice. It is by no means difficult to discount most 
of these influences, as well as that of his doctrines when 
he was drawing near to their complete formulation. 

What concerns us is Nietzsche's actual work — that is, 
not the finished product but the activity itself. Almost 
the whole of his life he concerned himself with all the 
questions centering about the problem of "morality," 
though he was neither a moralist, non-moralist, nor 
anti-moralist. Morality was only the aspect under which 
he considered civilizations and types of individuals, an 
aspect which he broadened to such a degree that the very 
word "morality" gains an entirely new meaning in his 
hands. 



NIETZSCHE AND THE NEW MORALITY 195 

Nietzsche's views were not those of a mere reactionary, 
as is usually thought. Because he came finally to ad- 
mire certain caste systems, like that of India, or, rather, 
because he used them as a literary illustration of his 
thought, it is sometimes supposed that he stood definitely 
for that sum of all reaction, caste. On the contrary, his 
whole philosophy was directed against caste, that is, until 
the very last of his writings. 

In Nietzsche's profoundly revolutionary and epoch- 
making view, morality consists fundamentally not in de- 
termining the best relations between individuals, but in 
determining which are the best individuals. The prob- 
lem of morality is the problem of individual develop- 
ment. But this does not mean that there is to be no 
morality. For our judgment of the relative worth of 
individuals determines what types of individuals society 
will produce, what types will survive, what will be the 
relations between them, what form of society will pre- 
vail, to what activities humanity will devote itself, and 
what kind of culture and civilization will result. 

It cannot be claimed that Nietzsche is in complete ac- 
cord with the pragmatic philosophy. But it would be 
impossible to deny that the main current of his work and 
his most fundamental habit of thought are thoroughly 
pragmatic. We might indeed be listening to any modern 
pragmatist when we read that "the greater part of con- 
scious thinking must be counted among the instinctive 
functions." Nietzsche, like the pragmatists, judges even 
the philosophers by their environment and interprets 
their philosophy accordingly. The philosopher is chiefly 
influenced by his instincts : 

"And behind all logic and its seeming sovereignty of 
movement, there are valuations, or to speak more plainly, 
physiological demands, for the maintenance of a definite 
mode of life." 1 



I96 THE LARGER ASPECTS OF SOCIALISM 

Nietzsche goes as far as James, and may even have 
suggested the thought to James, when he says that the 
falseness of an opinion does not necessarily take any- 
thing away from its value — though Nietzsche's criterion 
of value is not whether the opinion accomplishes some- 
thing for the individual who owns it, but the far wider 
criterion whether it is life-furthering and species-pre- 
serving. His view, it may be seen, is at least social, or, 
as Nietzsche himself would say, moral: 

"The falseness of an opinion is not for us any objec- 
tion to it; it is here, perhaps, that our new language 
sounds most strangely. The question is, how far an 
opinion is life- furthering, life-preserving, species-preserv- 
ing, perhaps species-rearing; and we are fundamentally 
inclined to maintain that the falsest opinions (to which 
the synthetic judgments a priori belong) are the most 
indispensable to us; that without a recognition of logical 
fictions, without a comparison of reality with the purely 
imagined world of the absolute and immutable, without 
a constant counterfeiting of the world by means of 
numbers, man could not live — that the renunciation of 
false opinions would be a renunciation of life, a nega- 
tion of life. To recognise untruth as a condition of 
life; that is certainly to impugn the traditional ideas 
of value in a dangerous manner, and a philosophy which 
ventures to do so has thereby alone placed itself beyond 
good and evil." 2 

Whenever Nietzsche, then, examines the philosopher's 
opinions in the light of his environment, he does not 
necessarily condemn him, but merely points to the rela- 
tive value of his "truth" : 

"They all pose as though their real opinions had been 
discovered and attained through the self-evolving of 
a cold, pure, divinely indifferent dialectic (in contrast 
to all sorts of mystics, who, fairer and foolisher, talk 



NIETZSCHE AND THE NEW MORALITY I97 

of 'inspiration') ; whereas, in fact, a prejudicial proposi- 
tion, idea, or 'suggestion,' which is generally their 
heart's desire abstracted and defined, is defended by 
them with arguments sought out after the event. They 
are all advocates who do not wish to be regarded as such, 
generally astute defenders also of their prejudices, which 
they dub 'truth.' " 3 

Not only does Nietzsche agree with the pragmatists 
that physiology underlies logic, but he is similarly suspi- 
cious of the tendency to generalization. And, like Berg- 
son, he believes that the senses, on the other hand, if 
properly understood, do not 'deceive at all : 

"What we make out of their testimony, that is what 
introduces falsehood; for example, the falsehood of 
unity, the falsehoods of materiality, of substance, of 
permanence." 4 

Indeed the thought is here so similar to that of Berg- 
son that it is almost impossible to suppose that the 
French philosopher did not take something from his 
German predecessor. 

Nietzsche is similarly critical of the unconscious meta- 
physics of modern science until it is given some kind of 
a conscious philosophical basis : 

"There is, strictly judging, no such thing as an 'un- 
conditioned' science ; the very thought of such a thing is 
unthinkable, paralogical. , . . Indeed there is no 
doubt — and here my 'Joyful Science' may do the speak- 
ing (cf. book v, aph. 344) : 'He who is veritable in 
that daring and ultimate sense, as is presupposed by 
the belief in science, in so believing be-yeas another 
world than the world of life, nature and history; and in 
so far as he be-yeas this "other world" — what? must 
he not even thereby be-nay its counterpart, this world, 
our world? It is still a metaphysical belief which under- 
lies our belief in science.' " 5 



I98 THE LARGER ASPECTS OF SOCIALISM 

He shares completely the pragmatist's aversion to sci- 
ence for science's sake : 

" 'Knowledge for its own sake' — that is the last snare 
laid by morality; we are thereby completely entangled 
in morals once more. 

''He who is a thorough teacher takes things seriously 
— and even himself — only in relation to his pupils." 6 

While Nietzsche demands that science be guided by 
philosophy, his conception of philosophy is strictly sci- 
entific and humanistic. No pragmatist is more opposed 
to centering discussion on the ultimate : 

"Every philosophy which puts peace higher than war, 
every ethic with a negative grasp of the idea of happi- 
ness, every metaphysic and physic that knows a finale, 
an ultimate condition of any kind whatever, every pre- 
dominating, esthetic or religious longing for an aside, 
a beyond, an outside, an above — all these permit one to 
ask whether sickness has not been the motive which 
inspired the philosopher." 7 

He even pushes his aversion to the ultimate to the 
point not only of evaluating opinions according to the 
periods or the persons that hold them, but even accord- 
ing to moods and stages of individual development : 

"Something now appears to thee as an error which 
thou formerly lovedst as a truth, or as a probability : 
thou pushest it from thee and imaginest that thy reason 
has there gained a victory. But perhaps that error was 
then, when thou wast still another person — thou art 
always another person — just as necessary to thee as all 
thy present 'truths,' like a skin, as it were, which con- 
cealed and veiled from thee much which thou still mayst 
not see. Thy new life, and not thy reason, has slain 
that opinion for thee : thou dost not require it any longer, 
and now it breaks down of its own accord, and the 
irrationality crawls out of it as a worm into the light." 8 



NIETZSCHE AND THE NEW MORALITY 10,0, 

He is equally opposed to the "evolutionary" and ante- 
pragmatic habit of judging existing problems according 
to mere origins, for these are no more decisive than 
conclusions : 

"The farther we trace the origin the less we feel con- 
cerned about our interests; nay, all our valuations and 
interestedness in things begin to lose their meaning the 
further we retrccede in our knowledge and the nearer we 
approach the things themselves. The insignificance of 
the origin increases in proportion to our insight into the 
origin ; whereas the things nearest to, around and within 
ourselves gradually begin to display colors and beauty, 
puzzles and riches of greater importance than the older 
humanity ever dreamt of." 9 

Indeed Nietzsche regarded the philosophies which pre- 
ceded the present pragmatic habit of mind as being not 
only reactionary but the last stronghold of reaction. 
After all manner of tyranny had given way the last 
tyranny is the expectation that some philosopher or 
intellectual Messiah will come along and save the hu- 
man race. The tyrants of the intellect, he says, are the 
worst : 

"In our days the advancement of science is no longer 
thwarted by the casual fact that man attains an age of 
about seventy years, as was the case for too long a time. 
Formerly a man wanted to attain the sum total of knowl- 
edge during this short period, and according to this 
general desire people valued the methods of knowledge. 
The minor individual questions and experiments were 
considered contemptible ; people wanted the shortest cut, 
believing that since everything in the world seemed 
adapted to man, even the acquirement of knowledge was 
regulated in conformity with the limits of human life. 
To solve everything with one blow, with one word — 
this was the secret wish, The task was pictured in the 



200 THE LARGER ASPECTS OF SOCIALISM 

metaphor of the Gordian knot or the egg of Columbus; 
no one doubted but that it was possible to reach the 
goal, even of knowledge, in the manner of Alexander 
or Columbus, and to satisfy all questions by one answer. 
'There is a mystery to be solved,' appeared to be the 
goal of life in the eyes of the philosopher; first of all 
the mystery had to be discovered and the problem of 
the world to be compressed into the simplest enigmatical 
form. The unbounded ambition and delight of being 
the 'unraveller of the world' filled the dreams of the 
thinker, nothing seemed to him worth any trouble but the 
means of bringing everything to a satisfactory conclu- 
sion. Hence philosophy was a kind of last struggle for 
the tyrannical sway of the intellect. The fact that such 
a sway was reserved for some very happy, noble, in- 
genious, bold, powerful person — a peerless one — was 
doubted by nobody." 10 

Nietzsche's view of psychology is as thoroughly prag- 
matic as his view of philosophy. Especially interest- 
ing as a foreshadowing is his radical belief that all con- 
sciousness is social. 

Of course when Nietzsche speaks of anything as "so- 
cial" or conscious he does not mean to give it the highest 
value. He believes with modern psychology that our ac- 
tions are very largely governed by unconscious processes. 
The purpose of consciousness, he holds, is chiefly for 
communication, and it develops in proportion to the ca- 
pacity and necessity for communication. He contends, 
in a word, that consciousness has been necessary only as 
between man and man : 

"Man, like every living creature, thinks unceasingly, 
but does not know it ; the thinking which is becoming 
conscious of itself is only the smallest part thereof, we 
may say, the most superficial part, the worst part — for 
this conscious thinking alone is done in words, that is to 
say, in the symbols for communication, by means of 



NIETZSCHE AND THE NEW MORALITY 201 

which the origin of consciousness is revealed. 
It is only as a social animal that man has learned to be- 
come conscious of himself — he is doing so still, and 
doing so more and more. As is obvious, my idea is that 
consciousness does not properly belong to the individual 
existence of man, but rather to the social and gregarious 
nature in him; that, as follows therefrom, it is only 
in relation to communal and gregarious utility that it is 
finely developed; and that consequently each of us, in 
spite of the best intention of understanding himself as 
individually as possible, and of 'knowing himself will 
always just call into consciousness the non-individual in 
him, namely, his 'averageness' — that our thought itself 
is continuously as it were outvoted by the character of 
consciousness — by the imperious 'genius of the species' 
therein — and is translated back into the perspective of 
the herd. Fundamentally our actions are in an incom- 
parable manner altogether personal, unique and absolutely 
individual — there is no doubt about it ; but as soon as 
we translate them into consciousness, they do not appear 
so any longer. . . . The world of which we can 
become conscious is only a superficial and symbolic 
world, a generalized and vulgarized world; that every- 
thing which becomes conscious becomes just thereby 
shallow, meager, relatively stupid — a generalization, a 
symbol, a characteristic of the herd ; that with the evolv- 
ing of consciousness there is always combined a great, 
radical perversion, falsification, superficialization and 
generalization." 11 

Finally, Nietzsche concludes that we do not have any 
organ at all for knowing or for "truth." He agrees with 
the other pragmatists that "we know," or believe, or 
fancy, just as much as may be of use, but of use, he 
thinks, only to "the human herd, the species" : 

"And even what is here called 'usefulness' is ulti- 
mately only a belief, a fancy, and perhaps precisely the 



202 THE LARGER ASPECTS OF SOCIALISM 

most fatal stupidity by which we shall one day be 
ruined." 11 

To Nietzsche the fact that consciousness is social 
means only that the individual has to be always on guard 
against it to protect what is most individual in himself, 
namely, his sub-conscious self: 

"The known, that is to say, what we are accustomed 
to, so that we no longer marvel at it, the commonplace, 
any kind of rule to which we are habituated, all and 
everything in which we know ourselves to be at home — 
what? is not our need of knowing just this need of the 
known? the will to discover in everything strange, un- 
usual, or questionable, something which no longer dis- 
quiets us? 

"For 'what is known is understood,' they are unani- 
mous as to that. Even the most circumspect among them 
think that the known is at least more easily understood 
than the strange; that, for example, it is methodically 
ordered to proceed outward from the 'inner world,' from 
'the facts of consciousness,' because it is the world which 
is better known to us! Error of errors! The known 
is the accustomed, and the accustomed is the most diffi- 
cult of all to 'understand,' that is to say, to perceive as 
a problem, to perceive as strange, distant, 'outside of 
us.'" 12 

One of Nietzsche's leading thoughts, which is with 
him always, is that Socrates and his followers are re- 
sponsible for this exaggeration of the importance of the 
conscious or rationalistic elements : 

"Reason — -virtue — happiness means merely that we 
have to imitate Socrates, and put a permanent day-light 
in opposition to the obscure desires — the daylight of rea- 
son. We have to be rational, clear and distinct at any 
price ; every yielding to the instincts, to the unconscious, 
leads downwards. . . . Socrates was a misunder- 



NIETZSCHE AND THE NEW MORALITY 2C»3 

standing, the whole of improving morality, including 
Christian morality, has been a misunderstanding. 
. The fiercest day-light, rationality at any price, 
the life clear, cold, prudent, conscious, without instincts, 
in opposition to instincts ; this itself was only an infirm- 
ity, another infirmity, and not at all a way of return to 
Virtue,' to 'health,' or to happiness. To have to combat 
the instincts — that is the formula for decadence; as long 
as life ascends, happiness is identical with instinct." 14 

Nietzsche believes that during the whole course of our 
historic evolution the intellect has been developed out of 
all proportion to our strength and the exercise of our 
strength. Otherwise we should have known that "we 
can understand only that which we can do" — certainly 
the very essence of pragmatism. Nietzsche criticizes our 
"intellectualism" somewhat too strongly, however, as not 
only the intellect but any function that is valuable will 
necessarily be developed occasionally and even frequently 
in more or less excess of what we can do with it, and 
this apparently useless exercise will have a certain utility, 
just as play or sport has. 

"The intellect is proud of knowing more, of running 
faster, and of reaching the goal almost instantaneously; 
so the realm of thoughts in comparison with the realms 
of action, of volition, and experience, appears to be a 
realm of freedom, while, as previously stated, it is but 
a realm of superficiality and sufficiency." 15 

"Thoughts are the shadows of our sentiments, always, 
however, obscurer, emptier, simpler." Not only does 
Nietzsche give the intellect as such a subordinate posi- 
tion, but he analyzes the will also into other elements of 
consciousness, just as modern psychology does. A will 
or conscious aim is of secondary value, he says, when 
compared with deep sub-conscious impulses — which may 



204 THE LARGER ASPECTS OF SOCIALISM 

either appear in early youth, or come into consciousness 
after the consciously willed has been fully expressed and 
exhausted : 

"Let the youthful soul look back on life with the 
question, 'what hast thou up to now truly loved, what 
has drawn thy soul upward, mastered it and blessed it, 
too?' Set up these things that thou hast honoured be- 
fore thee, and maybe they will show thee in their being 
and their order a law which is the fundamental law of 
thine own self." 16 

"The ignoble nature is distinguished by the fact that 
it keeps its advantage steadily in view, and that this 
thought of the end and advantage is even stronger than 
its strongest impulse ; not to be tempted to inexpedient 
action by its impulses — that is, its wisdom and inspira- 
tion. In comparison with the ignoble nature the higher 
nature is more irrational, for the noble, magnanimous 
and self-sacrificing person succumbs in fact to his im- 
pulses, and in his best moments his reason lapses alto- 
gether." 17 

And again the governing of the will by conscious mo- 
tives is regarded not only as an inferior mode of life but 
as dangerous : 

"In itself every high degree of circumspection in con- 
clusions, every skeptical inclination, is a great danger to 
life. No living being would have been preserved unless 
the contrary inclination — to affirm rather than suspend 
judgment, to mistake and fabricate rather than wait, 
to assent rather than deny, to decide rather than be in 
the right — had been cultivated with extraordinary as- 
siduity." 18 

It must be said here that the mere fact that we must 
seize only as much, in a given situation, as we can em- 
body in ourselves and our actions does not interfere with 
our taking into account later those elements which we 



NIETZSCHE AND THE NEW MORALITY 205 

cannot immediately assimilate. As so often happens 
with the literary man, Nietzsche makes a mystery where 
it is possible to take a perfectly clear position. In this 
and many other instances he says we must choose all or 
nothing, and that we must either trust our impulses en- 
tirely or our reason. A pragmatist would agree that 
the impulses play an equally important role with reason 
and demand first consideration, but it is not necessary to 
exclude reason at any point. 

While Nietzsche's error in this respect sometimes seems 
fatal, I believe that on the whole he takes the broader 
view. Certainly he is not an anti-intellectualist, for he 
sees that the problem of man is to make over his knowl- 
edge into instinct: 

"It is still an entirely new problem just dawning on 
the human eye and hardly yet plainly recognizable; to 
embody knowledge in ourselves and make it instinctive 
— a problem which is only seen by those who have 
grasped the fact that hitherto our errors alone have been 
embodied in us, and that all our consciousness is relative 
to errors! " 19 

If, now, we glance briefly at Nietzsche's view of sci- 
ence or nature, we shall have covered the philosophic 
basis of his reasoning. He is far from having been cap- 
tured by the prevailing evolution worship, and is espe- 
cially critical of the struggle-for-existence hypothesis. 

"To seek self-preservation merely is the expression of 
a state of distress, or of limitation of the true, funda- 
mental instinct of life which aims at the extension of 
power, and with this in view often enough calls in ques- 
tion self-preservation and sacrifices it. Over 
the whole of English Darwinism there hovers some- 
thing of the suffocating air of over-crowded England, 
something of the odor of humble people in need and 
in straits. But as an investigator of nature, a person 



206 THE LARGER ASPECTS OF SOCIALISM 

ought to emerge from his paltry human nook; and in 
nature the state of stress does not prevail, but superfluity, 
even prodigality to the extent of folly. The struggle for 
existence is only an exception, a temporary restriction 
of the will to live; the struggle, be it great or small, 
turns everywhere on predominance, on increase and ex- 
pansion, on power, in conformity to the will to power, 
which is just the will to live." 20 

And again in one of his last volumes he returns to 
the same question: 

"As regards the celebrated 'struggle for life,' it seems 
to me in the meantime to be more asserted than proved. 
It occurs, but only as an exception; the general aspect 
of life is not a state of want or hunger; it is rather a 
state of opulence, luxuriance, and even absurd prodigality 
— where there is a struggle, it is a struggle for 
power." 21 

Nietzsche regards natural evolution, then, as by no 
means understood or comprehended in modern scientific 
formulas. He is willing to regard human nature as 
continuous with that of the lower forms of life, he is 
permeated through and through with the idea of evolu- 
tion, but he does not accept the prevailing scientific inter- 
pretation of evolution. His disagreement on this point, 
moreover, is absolutely fundamental to all his thinking. 
He is thoroughly anthropocentric in the sense in which I 
have employed this expression in previous chapters, and 
absolutely opposed both to the mechanistic view and to 
the doctrine of free will. 

He complains of the reigning instinct and modern 
taste "which would rather reconcile itself to the abso- 
lute fortuitousness and even mechanistical nonsensical- 
ness of all 'happening' than to the theory of a will to 
power as manifesting itself in all happening" : 



NIETZSCHE AND THE NEW MORALITY 207 

'The democratic idiosyncrasy against all that sways, 
or will to sway, modern misarchism (to coin a bad word 
for a bad cause) has gradually become merged to such 
an extent into, and so taken on the guise of, spirituality, 
keenest spirituality, that to-day it forces, and is allowed 
to force its way, step by step, into the exactest and 
seemingly most objective sciences; in fact, it seems to 
me to have already succeeded in usurping the entire 
science of physiology and biology, much to its disad- 
vantage, as is self-evident, for it has eliminated from 
this science a fundamental notion, the notion of func- 
tional activity. Laboring under this idiosyncrasy, 
'adaptation,' that is to say, a second-rate activity, in' 
fact, a mere reactivity, is pushed into the foreground, 
and indeed, life itself has even been defined as 'a con- 
tinuous better adjustment of internal relations to external 
relations' (Herbert Spencer). But this is to mistake 
the true nature and function of life, which is will to 
power. It is to overlook the principal priority which 
the spontaneous, aggressive, transgressive, new-interpre- 
tative and new-directive forces possess, from the result 
of which 'adaptation' follows. It is to deny the sov- 
ereign office of the highest functionaries in the organism, 
in which functionaries the will to life appears as an active 
and formative principle." 22 

Nietzsche's treatment of "morality," or civilization, 
which is the center about which his thought revolves, 
may be considered under several heads. His first object 
is to destroy the foundations of all social ethics. His 
next is to invert or reverse this social ethics, that is to 
bring about a complete moral revolution. And finally 
he reaches an attitude toward all we have hitherto 
known as morality that seems very nearly non-moral, 
though we shall find that he is not in reality taking a 
stand against morality but rather wishes to pass beyond 
it and to look behind it. 



208 THE LARGER ASPECTS OF SOCIALISM 

One of the briefest and best summaries of his view of 
the history of all moral systems up to the present is con- 
tained in the following expression : 

"At a certain point in the development of a nation, its 
most circumspect class (i. e., the most retrospective and 
prospective) declares the experience to be closed accord- 
ing to which people are to live — i. e., according to which 
they can live. Its aim is to bring home from the times 
of experiment and unfortunate experience the richest and 
completest harvest possible. Consequently, what is above 
all to be avoided is the continuation of experimenting, 
the continuation of the fluid condition of values, testing, 
choosing and criticising of values in infinitum ." 23 

In other words, the morality of the societies of the 
past and present has been founded on the very opposite 
belief to that of the modern pragmatism. It has wished 
to put an end to experimenting; pragmatism wishes to 
experiment. But in so far as experience is closed for 
society social evolution has ceased. 

Social ethics, restricted to what has been gained from 
the past experience of a given society, limit the develop- 
ment of the society, but what is even more serious, from 
Nietzsche's point of view, is that they destroy the indi- 
vidual. As he expresses it, the motives of society are 
egoistic. For its own ends it is willing to annihilate the 
individual : 

"The virtues of a man are called good, not in respect 
of the results they have for himself, but in respect of the 
results which we expect therefrom for ourselves and for 
society; we have all along had very little unselfishness, 
very little 'non-egoism' in our praise of the virtues ! 
. . . If you have a virtue, an actual, perfect virtue 
(and not merely a kind of impulse toward virtue!), 
you are its victim! But your neighbor praises your 
virtue precisely on that account ! . . . , In short, 



NIETZSCHE AND THE NEW MORALITY 20O, 

what is praised is the unreason in the virtues, in con- 
sequence of which the individual allows himself to be 
transformed into a function of the whole. The praise 
of the virtues is the praise of something which is pri- 
vately injurious to the individual; it is praise of impulses 
which deprive man of his noblest self-love, and the power 
to take the best care of himself. . . . Education 
proceeds in this manner throughout; it endeavors, by 
a series of enticements and advantages, to determine the 
individual to a certain mode of thinking and acting, 
which, when it has become habit, impulse, and passion, 
rules in him and over him in opposition to his ultimate 
advantage, but 'for the general good.' . . . The 
praise of the unselfish, self-sacrificing, virtuous person 
. . . this praise has in any case not originated out 
of the spirit of unselfishness! The 'neighbor' praises 
unselfishness because he profits by it! . . . The 
fundamental contradiction in that morality which at 
present stands in high honor is here indicated; the 
motives to such a morality are in antithesis to its 
principle! That with which this morality wishes to prove 
itself refutes it out of its criterion of what is moral!" 24 

Here we have an example not only of the substance 
of Nietzsche's thought but of his method. He wishes 
to pierce motives to the bottom and is never willing to 
accept the explanation for an action that lies in the con- 
sciousness of the actor himself. 

In his antagonism to past systems of morality, educa- 
tion, and culture, Nietzsche is nothing less than passion- 
ate. For he feels that these moral systems and the civili- 
zations they supported have actually succeeded in killing 
off most of the individuality in the world. Far from 
saying, as the old moralists do, that we have too much 
egoism, he complains that egoism is practically dead and 
that only pseudo-egoism is alive : 

'The great majority— whatever they may think and 



2IO THE LARGER ASPECTS OF SOCIALISM 

say about their 'selfishness 1 — as long as they live do 
nothing for their ego, but only for the phantom of this 
ego, which has grown up in the heads of their friends 
and been transmitted to them; consequently they all 
live in a mist of impersonal, half-personal opinions, and 
of arbitrary, so to speak poetic valuations, the one for 
ever in the head of somebody else, and this one again in 
other heads : an old world of phantasms, which knows 
how to give itself a matter-of-fact appearance !" 26 

The attack on egoism has been a peculiarity not only 
of Christianity or other moral codes known as altruistic 
but of all moral codes. By the very fact that they are 
"social" they must preach self-denial to the individual, 
who would otherwise express himself independently of 
the code : 

"Self-denial is exacted, not because of its useful conse- 
quences for the individual, but in order that custom or 
observance, despite all individual countertendencies and 
advantages, may appear to rule supreme. The individ- 
ual must sacrifice himself — such is the commandment of 
the morality of custom. ... It is incalculable how much 
suffering just the rarer, choicer, and more original 
minds must have undergone in the course of history 
owing to their ever being looked upon, nay, their look- 
ing upon themselves as the evil and dangerous. Orig- 
inality of every kind has acquired a bad conscience under 
the supreme rule of the morality of custom." 26 

But Nietzsche does not forget the leading principle of 
his psychology. Men's actions are largely instinctive 
and if morality engulfs individuals it is not because a 
moral code has been "consciously" evolved, but because 
it is the expression of the "herd instinct" in the indi- 
vidual. The time is arriving, if it has not already ar- 
rived, when a new morality and a demand for its expres- 
sion are gradually to conquer the "herd instinct." But 



NIETZSCHE AND THE NEW MORALITY 211 

existing moral systems have come down to us from the 
past when this herd instinct — which, when conscious, be- 
comes social ethics — was entirely dominant: 

"Throughout the longest period in the life of mankind 
there was nothing more terrible to a person than to 
feel himself independent. To be alone, to feel inde- 
pendent, neither to obey nor to rule, to represent an 
individual — that was no pleasure to a person then, but 
a punishment; he was condemned 'to be an individ- 
ual' " 27 

It might seem that Nietzsche's inversion of ethics is 
as negative as his attack against it. But on second 
thought it will be seen that this inversion means the 
establishment of a positive principle, that responsibility 
to others, which is the deepest essence of morality, is 
only secured through responsibility to self. 

The feature of modern morality which is most offen- 
sive to Nietzsche is its tolerance, which is only another 
name for weakness, and in reaction from this he swings 
into the most positive positions : 

"We were ill from that modernism, — from lazy peace, 
from cowardly compromise, from the whole virtuous 
uncleanness of the modern yea and nay. That tolerance 
and largeur of heart which 'forgives' all because it 'un- 
derstands' all is Sirocco to us. Better to live in the ice 
than among modern virtues and other south winds !" 28 

Nietzsche is not guilty of this weakness, and his enor- 
mous influence is undoubtedly due to the fact that he 
preserves all the intensity, power and value of the mor- 
ality of the past without retaining the least of its sub- 
stance, without compromising with it to the smallest de- 
gree, or remaining undecided and "tolerant" in any single 
important issue. He does not hesitate to attack our most 
cherished ideals, joy, innocence, pity, and love, and to 



212 THE LARGER ASPECTS OF SOCIALISM 

advocate their opposites in their stead — an attitude which 
at first appears like mere paradox and does occasion- 
ally lead Nietzsche into weak and indefensible positions. 
But it is nevertheless the very secret of his strength 
and of his irresistible appeal to all modern minds, even 
to those who do not accept him. 

"One must not will to enjoy! 

"For joy and innocence are the most shamefaced 
things. Both will not to be sought. One should have 
them — but one should rather seek even sin and suffer- 
ing." (My italics.) 29 

It is difficult to see how any comment could shed light 
on this passage, other than a due emphasis on the words 
I have italicized. Let us take up other points at which 
Nietzsche touches upon sin and suffering. What makes 
man revolt against suffering is not suffering as such, 
but the senselessness of suffering: 

"Man, the animal bravest and best accustomed to pain, 
does not be-nay suffering in itself: he wills to suffer; 
he even seeks for suffering, provided that he is shown 
a significance, a therefore of suffering. The senseless- 
ness of suffering, not suffering itself, was the curse 
which so far lay upon mankind. And the ascetic ideal 
offered to mankind a significance. It was so far the 
only significance; any significance is better than no sig- 
nificance at all." 30 

Here we have Nietzsche's explanation why all sys- 
tems of morality, which have agreed in preaching self- 
denial, appealed to man. The endless effort of the race 
either to escape suffering or to find an explanation for 
it has led to the conception that it was sin in the in- 
dividual, when he sought to live without suffering: 
and also to the religion of pity, the effort to relieve others 



NIETZSCHE AND THE NEW MORALITY 213 

of suffering, even though they had invited it as an inevit- 
able incident of their development. 

Both this sense of personal sin in oneself and this pity 
for the sufferings of others are simply hindrances to the 
free development of personality: 

''Everywhere, however, where we are noticed as suf- 
ferers, our suffering is interpreted in a shallow way; 
it belongs to the nature of the emotion of pity to divest 
unfamiliar suffering of its properly personal character: 
— our 'benefactors' lower our value and volition more 
than our enemies. In most benefits which are con- 
ferred on the unfortunate there is something shocking 
in the intellectual levity with which the compassionate 
person plays the role of fate : he knows nothing of all 
the inner consequences and complications which are 
called misfortune for me or for you! The entire econ- 
omy of my soul and its adjustment by 'misfortune,' the 
uprising of new sources and needs, the closing up of old 
wounds, the repudiation of whole periods of the past — 
none of these things which may be connected with mis- 
fortune preoccupy the dear sympathizer. . . . Indeed 
there is even a secret seduction in all this awakening 
of compassion and calling for help: our 'own way' is 
a thing too hard and insistent, and too far removed 
from the love and gratitude of others, — we escape from 
it and from our most personal conscience, not at all 
unwillingly, and, seeking security in the conscience of 
others, we take refuge in the lovely temple of the 're- 
ligion of pity.' " 31 

In opposition to the religion of pity or sympathy 
Nietzsche offers the following: 

"Thou wilt also want to help, but only those whose 
distress thou entirely understandest, because they have 
one hope in common with thee — thy friends: and only 
in the way that thou helpest thyself: — I want to make 
them more courageous, more enduring, more simple, 



214 THE LARGER ASPECTS OF SOCIALISM 

more joyful! I want to teach them that which at pres- 
ent so few understand, and the preachers of fellowship 
in sorrow least of all: — namely, fellowship in joy!" 32 

Strange to say, Balzac (whom Nietzsche so much ad- 
mires) attacks as the egoist the very being Nietzsche 
attacks as the altruist : "A species which would like to 
keep the universe under lock and key and allow nothing 
to be done without their permission. They are unhappy 
if others are happy; they forgive nothing but vices, in- 
firmities, and failures. Aristocrats by nature, they 
make themselves democrats in spite, and choose to con- 
sort with inferiors as equals." The true egoist whom 
Nietzsche recommends is evidently the same "fellow in 
joy and understanding" that Balzac would call the true 
altruist. 

The conception of duty has been attacked by many 
modern writers, but none, perhaps, have made so thor- 
ough and brilliant an onslaught as Nietzsche; and none 
have come so near to offering an acceptable substitute. 
Instead of attacking duty and altruism directly, as so 
many have done, Nietzsche attacks them chiefly in the 
form of conscience and pity. He is not concerned with 
moral principles but with moral feelings — that is, the 
principles embodied in flesh and blood. How much more 
effective and profound is his criticism of pity than the 
ordinary criticism of altruism : 

"Should a person just once experimentally and inten- 
tionally make the occasions for pity in practical life the 
object of his attention for a while, and again and again 
picture to his mind all the misery he may meet with in 
his surroundings, he will assuredly grow ill and de- 
spondent. But should he wish to serve mankind in any 
sense of the word as a physician, he will have to be very 
cautious, else it might paralyze him in all critical 



NIETZSCHE AND THE NEW MORALITY 21 5 

moments, cramp his knowledge and unnerve his help- 
ful, delicate hand." 33 

It is through self-development that we can mean 
most to others rather than through the relatively petty 
occasions for pity and for interfering as "benefactors" 
in other people's lives. This is true to-day and it will 
be still more true in the better organized society of the 
future. 

Most revolutionary is Nietzsche's criticism of love and 
his praise for the opposite feeling — opposite, of course, 
not in the conventional sense, but in Nietzsche's think- 
ing. He asks for love for the farthest in place of love 
for the neighbor — "Do not spare him who is nearest to 
you." Nietzsche says this just as he would say, "Do not 
spare yourself" : 

"Conquer yourself in him who is nearest: and do not 
let yourself be given a right that you can conquer for 
yourself. . . . 

"Thus will the race of noble souls have it: they will 
have nothing for nothing, least of all love. 

"But he who is of the mob wishes to live without pay- 
ing : while we others to whom life gave itself, — we are 
always thinking of what we can best give in exchange 
for it. . . . 

"One should not wish to enjoy where one does not 
give enjoyment." 34 

Here we have the command to give joy as against 
the old command to love, for to give joy in Nietzsche's 
conception means that neither oneself nor one's neighbor 
is spared. Undoubtedly the essence of Christian moral- 
ity, as it originally was and as it is again to-day, rests on 
a religion of pity, and this Nietzsche rejects absolutely : 

"Should the nature of true morality be this, that after 
considering the most direct and immediate consequences 



2l6 THE LARGER ASPECTS OF SOCIALISM 

which our actions would have for another person, we 
bend our purpose accordingly? These are but narrow- 
minded and petty morals, though morals they may be: 
but it seems to me a loftier and more liberal view to 
glance aside from these immediate effects upon others 
and, under circumstances, to further even more distant 
purposes by the sorrow of others — so, for instance, when 
we promote knowledge, despite the certainty that first 
and immediately our freethinking will plunge them into 
doubt, grief, and worse afflictions. May we not at least 
deal with our neighbor just as we deal with ourselves? 
And if, with regard to ourselves, we have no such nar- 
row-minded and petty view of the immediate conse- 
quences and sufferings, why should we entertain it with 
regard to him?" 35 

It might be said, then, that Nietzsche praises one kind 
of love, a love which only certain individuals can give, 
those who have something left over after satisfying their 
most personal needs, those who are strong enough so 
that they must seek to live in large part through others 
and the influence they can exert over others. On the 
other hand the love which either demands pity on the 
one side or gives it on the other he considers only as a 
sign of weakness or of decadence : 

"One person may be empty and wanting to be sated; 
the other may be glutted and wishing to be unburdened 
— both are prompted to look for an individual that may 
serve their purposes. And this process, as understood 
in its highest sense, is, in both instances, denoted by 
the same word : Love — well ? should love be something 
unselfish?" 36 

Nietzsche goes on from the advocacy of "selfishness," 
understood in this sense, to the advocacy of "evil" it- 
self. It is the very individuality that people have called 
evil that seems to him to contain the highest value for 



NIETZSCHE AND THE NEW MORALITY 21? 

humanity — though sometimes, Nietzsche admits, in a 
perverted form. Of course he does not preach selfish- 
ness or evil as ordinarily understood, but he feels that 
these words come nearer to expressing his truth than do 
their opposites, "unselfishness" and "good" : 

"We also are to grow and blossom out of ourselves, 
free and fearless, in innocent selfishness ! And so, on 
the contemplation of such a man, these thoughts still 
ring in my ears to-day as formerly : 'That passion is 
better than stoicism or hypocrisy; that straightforward- 
ness, even in evil, is better than losing oneself in trying 
to observe traditional morality ; that the free man is 
just as able to be good as evil, but that the uneman- 
cipated man is a disgrace to nature, and has no 
share in heavenly or earthly bliss; finally, that all who 
wish to be free must become so through themselves, 
and that freedom falls to nobody's lot as a gift from 
Heaven." 37 

To all actions that have hitherto been called moral 
Nietzsche prefers on the whole those which have been 
called selfish, that is, in so far as these latter have been 
involuntary actions. He does not propose to invert 
values absolutely, but predicts that for a long time 
"moral" actions will become less and less frequent and 
selfish and involuntary actions more frequent. 

"An 'altruistic' morality, a morality which causes sel- 
fishness to languish, is, under all circumstances, a bad 
sign. This is true of the individual, it is especially true 
of peoples. The best is wanting when selfishness begins 
to be deficient. To choose instinctively what is self- 
injurious, to be allured by 'disinterested' motives, fur- 
nishes almost the formula for decadence. . . . Instead 
of naively saying, 7 am no longer of any account,' the 
moral falsehood in the mouth of the decadent says, 
'nothing is of any account, — life is of no account.' " 38 



2l8 THE LARGER ASPECTS OF SOCIALISM 

Nietzsche does not fail to give concrete examples of 
this principle. If he believes in a healthy selfishness he 
also believes consistently in exploitation of one person 
by another, and any philosophical sociologist would be 
likely to agree with him : 

"People now rave everywhere, even under the guise of 
science, about coming conditions of society in which, 
'the exploitation character' is to be absent : — that sounds 
to my ears as if they promised to invent a mode of life 
which should refrain from all organic functions. Ex- 
ploitation does not belong to a depraved, or imperfect 
and primitive society : it belongs to the nature of the liv- 
ing being as a primary organic function; it is a conse- 
quence of the intrinsic Will to Power which is precisely 
the Will to Life." 39 

The exploitation that revolutionists object to is quite 
another thing, the exploitation by a more or less hered- 
itary ruling class. When individuals have equal oppor- 
tunities unquestionably some of the most serviceable 
groupings to society and to all the individuals involved 
will be those where the initiative obviously comes from a 
few who are freely aided by others who have the virtue 
of appreciating the enterprise without the capacity to 
direct it themselves. 

"Never until now was there the least doubt or hesi- 
tation to set down 'the good man' as of higher value 
than 'the evil man,' — of higher value in the sense of 
furtherance, utility, prosperity as regards man in gen- 
eral (the future of man included). What if the reverse 
were true? What if in the 'good one' also a symptom 
of decline were contained, and a danger, a seduction, a 
poison, a narcotic by which the present might live at 
the expense of the future ? Perhaps more comfortably, 
less dangerously, but also in humbler style, — more 
meanly? ... So that just morality were to blame, if 



NIETZSCHE AND THE NEW MORALITY 2IO, 

a highest mightiness and splendor of the type of man — > 
possible in itself — were never attained? And that, 
therefore, morality itself would be the danger of 
dangers?" 40 

This idea of Nietzsche's, like so many others, can only 
be understood with reference to conditions of the future, 
though, inevitably, he himself is often tempted to use 
misleading illustrations from the past (Cesare Borgia!). 
While it is true that the evil spirits of the past were 
strong enough, like Napoleon, to conquer most of the 
moral and religious codes of their time (when they did 
not use them), it is also true that the backward con- 
dition of society in the past furnished these evil spirits 
with sheep, the shearing of which was a relatively easy 
and brutal process such as evidenced no very high quali- 
ties. Nietzsche wants such servile masses to serve their 
masters, and even a Socialist, when reading of such a 
mob proletariat as that of the ancient city of Rome, can 
share his feelings. But the strong man of the future 
must develop entirely different and greater qualities, if 
there are no such sheep to shear — as the Socialists hope 
— and nothing that Nietzsche has said suggests that he 
thinks that humanity should be provided forever with 
servile natures. It is not the actual character of Na- 
poleon, perverted by this parasitism, that attracts 
Nietzsche, so much as the latent energy and capacity of 
the man. Nietzsche condemns as strongly as anyone the 
tendency to tyrannize. It would have been sufficient for 
his purposes to say that in the "evil" Napoleon could 
have been found more qualities of value to mankind than 
in the "best" men of his period. 

Nietzsche shows just what type of man he really aims 
at when he praises the evil nature, by his reference to 
the strong man as the most "responsible," responsible 
first to himself and so also to the race. The sovereign 



220 THE LARGER ASPECTS OF SOCIALISM 

individual is the most responsible individual because he 
is "delivered from the morality of custom, autonomous, 
super-moral": 

"This freed one, who is really allowed to promise, this 
master of a free will, this sovereign — surely he cannot 
be ignorant of what a superiority over everything he is 
given by such a will, a will which is not allowed to prom- 
ise and pledge for itself; how much confidence, how 
much fear, how much reverence he creates (he deserves 
all three) ; and how, with this mastery over his self, he 
has also been intrusted with the mastery over circum- 
stances, nature, and all creatures possessed of a shorter 
will and less trustworthy than himself. . . . The proud 
knowledge of the extraordinary privilege of responsi- 
bility, the consciousness of this rare freedom, of this 
power over self and fate, has penetrated into the inmost 
depth of his personality and become instinct, dominating 
instinct: — by what name will he call it, this dominat- 
ing instinct, supposing that he personally needs a word 
for it? But there can be no doubt this sovereign man 
will call it his conscience." 41 

The sovereign individual has a conscience, but this 
conscience is a responsibility solely to himself: "For 
what is freedom? To have the will to be responsible to 
oneself, to keep the distance which supports us ... to 
be ready to sacrifice men for one's cause, oneself not 
excepted." 

It might seem to many that in preaching the sovereign 
individual Nietzsche has reached non-morality, and it is 
true that some of the things he says would lead to this 
conclusion, but this is very far from his real conception. 
Moral systems he is willing to destroy, but the intensity 
of moral feelings is to him the chief motive force in the 
advance of the human race. And he rejects absolutely 
the supposition that because different moral valuations 



NIETZSCHE AND THE NEW MORALITY 221 

necessarily prevail with different people there is no bind- 
ing morality at all : 

"Of course I shall not deny — except that I be a fool — 
that many actions which are called immoral ought to be 
avoided and resisted; and that many which are called 
moral ought to be done and encouraged — but I am of 
opinion that both should take place from motives other 
than have hitherto prevailed." 42 

As illustrations of this attitude are Nietzsche's firm 
belief in the value of benevolence while insisting that 
this benevolence must be selfish and his corresponding 
belief in the altruism of certain kinds of selfishness: 

"Meanwhile even that question remains unanswered, 
whether we are of greater use to others by constantly 
and immediately relieving and helping them — which, at 
most, can be done only in a very superficial way, so as 
not to grow into a tyrannical meddling and transform- 
ing — or by transforming our own selves." 43 

In inverting the conventional morality, then, he by 
no means rejects morality altogether. What he rejects 
is the "social" element in morality. If formerly people 
had a horror of deviating from custom he wishes them in 
the future to have a horror of following it : 

" 'My opinion is my opinion : another person has not 
easily a right to it' — such a philosopher of the future 
will say, perhaps. One must renounce the bad taste of 
wishing to agree with many people. 'Good' is no longer 
good when one's neighbor takes it into his mouth." 44 

But his attitude to morality is still better expressed in 
his discussion of the means of looking behind it and pass- 
ing beyond it : 

"We ought also to be able to stand above morality, 
and not only stand with the painful stiffness of one who 



222 THE LARGER ASPECTS OF SOCIALISM 

every moment fears to slip and fall, but we should also 
be able to soar and play above it!" 45 

He wishes to look not only behind acts but behind the 
conscious intentions that lie behind acts : 

"The suspicion arises that the decisive value of an ac- 
tion lies precisely in that which is not intentional, and 
that all its intentionalness, all that is seen, sensible, or 
'sensed' in it, belongs to its surface or skin — which, like 
every skin, betrays something, but conceals still more. 46 

"With his principles a man seeks either to dominate, 
or justify, or honor, or reproach, or conceal his habits : 
two men with the same principles probably seek funda- 
mentally different ends therewith." 47 

No matter what the moral code may be and no mat- 
ter what the reason is that causes the individual to sub- 
mit to it, his submission is nothing moral in itself, but 
requires further examination ; and Nietzsche's test is : 
do the action and the motive of the action spring from 
a developing or from a degenerating personality, from 
an advancing or from a retrogressive mood? 

"The submission to morals may be either slavish 
or vain, self-interested, resigned, gloomily fantastic, 
thoughtless, or an act of despair, like the submission 
to a prince : but it is nothing moral in itself." 48 

The individual acts from an egoistic motive, and he 
and his action are to be judged only in their relation to 
the evolution of the individual and the race : 

"If he represent descending development, decay, 
chronic degeneration, or sickening (diseases, taken on 
the whole, are phenomena which result from decay al- 
ready present, they are not the causes of it), he has 
little worth, and the greatest fairness would have him 
take away as little as possible from the well-constituted. 
He is no more than their parasite then." 49 



NIETZSCHE AND THE NEW MORALITY 223 

The whole conception of Nietzsche's "superman" is 
an effort to portray by hyperbole the characteristics of 
an ascending individual and an ascending race. 

What, then, does Nietzsche give us of the man of the 
future ? 

First of all, the sovereign and responsible individuals 
of the future are to be free to experiment with life, free 
from any restriction of a moral code beyond their own 
deep and strong feelings : 

"Numerous new experiments shall be made in life and 
society; an enormous incubus of bad conscience shall be 
removed from the world — these are the general aims 
which ought to be recognized and furthered by all hon- 
est and truthseeking people." 50 

These experiments, Nietzsche believes, have not been 
foreshadowed in any of the ideals of past writers, be- 
cause these ideals were too abstract, and were even less 
attractive than the reality of the past: 

"How much more worthy is actual man, compared 
with any merely wished, dreamt, or shamelessly falsified 
man ! compared with any ideal man whatsoever. It is 
only ideal man that is distasteful to the philosopher." 51 

We are to receive our inspiration, then, not from the 
paltry ideals that have been presented to us, but from 
the magnificent reality — magnificent rather, of course, 
in its obvious possibilities than in what has been achieved. 
And the developed individual of the future is to realize 
that, being freed from the oppression of society, even 
in the form of "ideals," he has only to follow his own 
deepest impulses in order to go beyond every ideal that 
has yet been imagined : 

"Let us consider in the last place what naivete it man- 
ifests to say, 'Man ought to be so and so!' Reality ex- 



224 THE LARGER ASPECTS OF SOCIALISM 

hibits to us an enchanting wealth of types, the luxuriance 
of a prodigality of forms and transformations ; and some 
paltry hod-man of a moralist says with regard to it, 'No! 
man ought to be different!' He even knows how man 
ought to be, this parasite and bigot : he paints himself 
on the wall and says, 'Ecce homo!' But even if the 
moralist directs himself merely to the individual and 
says, 'You ought to be so and so,' he still continues to 
make himself ridiculous. The individual, in his ante- 
cedents and in his consequents, is a piece of fate, an addi- 
tional law, an additional necessity for all that now takes 
place and will take place in the future. To say to him, 
'Alter thyself,' is to require everything to alter itself, 
and backward, too." 52 

The men of the future are not to impose limits on 
themselves either by the high degree of specialization in 
work that prevails to-day or by narrow devotion to any 
so-called ideal. Nietzsche holds that the conception of 
greatness should rest precisely in comprehensiveness, 
multifariousness and all-roundness, in opposition to the 
prevailing specialization. The superior man of the future 
would take rank precisely according to the amount and 
variety of that which he could bear and take upon him- 
self, "according to the extent to which a man could 
stretch his responsibility." 

The individual is to fight for breadth at every cost. 
Here are Nietzsche's rules for this moral struggle : 

"Not to cleave to any person, be it even the dearest — 
every person is a prison and also a recess. Not to cleave 
to a fatherland, be it even the most suffering and neces- 
sitous — it is even less difficult to detach one's heart from 
a victorious fatherland. Not to cleave to a sympathy, be 
it even for higher men, into whose peculiar torture and 
helplessness chance has given us an insight. Not to 
cleave to a science, though it tempt one with the most 
valuable discoveries, apparently specially reserved for us. 



NIETZSCHE AND THE NEW MORALITY 225 

Not to cleave to one's own liberation, to the voluptuous 
distance and remoteness of the bird, which always 
flies further aloft in order to see more under it — the 
danger of the flier. Not to cleave to our own virtues, 
nor become as a whole a victim to any of our special- 
ties, to our 'hospitality' for instance, which is the dan- 
ger of dangers for highly developed and wealthy souls, 
who deal prodigally, almost indifferently, with them- 
selves, and push the virtue of liberality so far that it be- 
comes a vice. One must know how to conserve one- 
self — the best test of independence." 53 

Much of this passage reminds us of Stirner. Nietz- 
sche rises, perhaps, to an even greater height, in warning 
us not to cleave to our own virtues or our own liberation 
or our own liberality — though a similarity to Stirner 
may be seen even here. 

In Nietzsche's references to Kant and Schopenhauer 
we see the quality that he insists upon for the philoso- 
pher, that is for his ideal. Kant's limitations, he says, 
were due to the fact that his experiences were not great, 
and by experiences Nietzsche means "the vicissitudes and 
convulsions which occur in the most solitary and quiet 
life which has leisure and burns with the passion for 
thinking." Schopenhauer, on the other hand, lacked 
"evolution" in his life and in his thought. Nietzsche 
values, and expects to develop in the future, passion for 
thinking, with all its consequent vicissitudes and even 
convulsions, but he insists equally on constant evolution 
from the beginning to the end. In both points his future 
philosopher is distinguished absolutely from the philoso- 
pher of the past. For the man of intellect was formerly 
concerned not in endless development but in settling 
things once and for all, not in passionate but in dispas- 
sionate thought. 

The chief aim of man is creation. Nietzsche wants 



226 THE LARGER ASPECTS OF SOCIALISM 

to know of all human activity whether it is building for 
permanence or building for change, and he expects us in 
the future to build for change. Either hunger or super- 
fluity, he says, may create. But the creation of super- 
fluity has an infinitely higher value. The great test is 
"whether the desire for rigidity, for perpetuation, for 
being is the cause of the creating, or [whether the 
cause is] the desire for destruction, for change, for the 
new, for the future — for becoming/' 54 

Here is the old world that Nietzsche fights against : 

"This hatred of what is human; still more, of what is 
animal; still more, of what is material; this horror of 
the senses, of reason itself ; this fear of happiness and 
beauty; this longing away from all appearance, change, 
becoming, death, desire, longing itself — all this implies 
(let us dare to comprehend it!) a will to Nothingness, 
a horror of life, an insurrection against the most funda- 
mental presuppositions of life." 55 

And here is the morality of the new world: 

"What is happiness? — The feeling that power in- 
creases, — that a resistance is overcome. 

"Not contentedness, but more power; not peace at any 
price, but warfare; not virtue, but capacity." 56 

This last word, "capacity," expresses Nietzsche's es- 
sential thought better than the word "power" or the 
favorite phrase of his later writings, "the will to power." 
Capacity implies that men are to cease endeavoring to 
lay down laws for other men or obeying laws made by 
other men, and are to develop the powers that lie in 
themselves, which will force them to assume infinitely 
varied relations to others. The will to power implies 
that the chief end of man is to use other men with or 
without their knowledge or consent. But the key to 
Nietzsche's thought is rather that the individual shall 



NIETZSCHE AND THE NEW MORALITY 227 

develop free from all external pressure on the part of 
organized society or other individuals. 

Nietzsche's central idea was not the "will to power," 
but that for the individual to develop his capacity it is 
necessary for him to use others and to be used by others ; 
not the will to obtain power by whatever means, but the 
willingness to use over others that beneficent [though 
not benevolent] power that is naturally given us by our 
capacity — a complete reversal, in proportion as human 
capacity is developed, of Kant's principle that we should 
always regard others as ends and never as means, and 
so the most momentous revolution of morality in history. 

Once the new moral principle is accepted by the masses 
and not merely by the superior few to whom alone 
Nietzsche appealed, there will be no falsehood by which 
they can be any longer deceived, no power by which they 
can any longer be held in subjection or prevented from 
bringing to completion that revolution in civilization 
which alone can assure the maximum development of 
the race. 



X 

THE SOCIALIST EXPLANATION OF RELIGION 

The view that religion is a force operating against 
progress has been held by leading Socialists from the 
beginning of the movement. Karl Marx wrote con- 
cerning the United States : 

"When we see that in a country of complete political 
emancipation religion not only exists but keeps all its 
strength, there is no need of other proofs, I hope, that 
the existence of religion is not incompatible with the 
full political maturity of the state. But if religion exists 
it is in consequence of a defective social organization 
whose cause must be looked for in the very essence of 
the state itself. . . . For us religion is no longer the 
cause of social imperfection but its effect. So we explain 
the religious servitude of citizens politically enfranchised 
by their social servitude. We do not claim that they 
ought to shake off their religious chains in order to make 
their social chains fall; we say, on the contrary, that they 
will break their religions chains by getting rid of their 
social chains." (My italics.) 

The founders of the present Socialist theory, then, 
besides attacking the church, attacked religion itself, 
though they counseled against any waste of energy 
against an institution they considered as a by-product. 

But their hostility to all religion did not mean that 
they accepted the atheism and free-thinking of the 
bourgeois liberals and radicals. Anyone familiar with 

228 



THE SOCIALIST EXPLANATION OF RELIGION 229 

the radical views of the early Socialists, as well as the 
foremost living- representatives of the movement, must 
realize instantly that it would follow as a matter of 
course that they must reject the religion of the pres- 
ent as they did all other social institutions and ideas 
(see Appendix B). But it follows with equal logic 
that they must reject the atheism and agnosticism of 
the present ruling class (see Appendix A). And the 
Socialists' criticism, in a word, is along the same lines as ^ 
the present scientific studies of religion, but somewhat 
more advanced. 

For religion continues to exist as a more or less im- 
portant factor in society. No matter how ignorant 
it was in its origin or how retrogressive it may be 
in its effect to-day, it has been present in one form 
or another in almost every society and every age. 
Whether it is viewed as a good or an evil, whether 
it is taken as a normal or as a pathological feature of 
civilizations, it is impossible to understand the past or 
the present without knowing something of the present 
nature and past history of religion and without having 
some idea of just what functions it fills and has filled. 
It must be confessed that no final Socialist answer has 
been given to these questions, but at least some definite 
progress has been made and we can point out the lines 
that Socialist thought is beginning to follow. 

We can best approach the Socialist and pragmatic view 
by beginning with a brief review of the present status of 
the scientific study of religion by the "evolutionary" 
school — and proceeding from this "evolutionary" view 
to the broader and more practical standpoint Socialists 
and pragmatists believe will grow out of it. 

One of the chief contributions of the modern "evo- 
lutionary" school to the study of religion has been the 
standpoint — in accord with pragmatic psychology — that 



23O THE LARGER ASPECTS OF SOCIALISM 

religion has always consisted as much in practices as in 
ideas and feelings : 

"Religion always contains two factors. First, a theo- 
retical factor, what a man thinks about the unseen — his 
theology, or, if we prefer so to call it, his mythology. 
Second, what he does in relation to this unseen — his 
ritual. These factors rarely if ever occur in complete 
separation; they are blended in very varying propor- 
tions. Religion we have seen was in the last century 
regarded mainly in its theoretical aspect as a doctrine. 
Greek religion, for example, meant to most educated 
persons Greek mythology. Yet even a cursory examina- 
tion shows that neither Greek nor Roman had any creed 
or dogma, any hard and fast formulation of belief. In 
the Greek Mysteries only we find what we should call 
a Confiteor, and this is not a confession of faith but an 
avowal of rites performed. When the religion of primi- 
tive peoples came to be examined it was speedily seen 
that though vague beliefs necessarily abound, definite 
creeds are practically non-existent. Ritual is dominant 
and imperative. . . . Popular belief says, I think, 
therefore I act; modern scientific psychology says, I act 
(or rather, r<?act to outside stimulus), and so I come to 
think. Thus there is set going a recurrent series : act 
and thought become in their turn stimuli to fresh acts 
and thoughts." * 

The modern study of religions has also come to see 
that in the psychology and the life of primitive' man, 
and also of early civilizations, the field of religion is 
not to be marked off from the other practical and 
psychical activities. The whole habit of thought and 
all the customs of early man had as a rule a religious 
aspect and were influenced by religion, so that what 
we are concerned with at every point in this study is 
primitive psychology itself. 

This primitive psychology, like that of our own time, 



THE SOCIALIST EXPLANATION OF RELIGION 23 1 

was shaped primarily by the active life of the period, 
and it is this that the later evolutionists emphasize, as 
opposed to the earlier and also to the preevolutionary 
writers on religion, to w T hom the whole question was 
one of theology and not at all of social customs or of 
psychology in general: 

"Herbert Spencer argued that when a savage has a 
dream he seeks to account for it, and in so doing invents 
a spirit world. The mistake here lies in the 'seeks to 
account for it.' Man is at first too busy living to have 
any time for disinterested thinking. He dreams a dream 
and it is real for him. He does not seek to account 
for it any more than for his hands and feet. He cannot 
distinguish between a conception and a perception, that 
is all. . . . Ghosts and sprites, ancestor worship, the 
soul, oracles, prophecy; all these elements of the primi- 
tive supersensuous world we willingly admit to be the 
proper material of religion, but other elements are more 
surprising, such are class-names, abstract ideas, numbers, 
geometrical figures. We do not nowadays think of these 
as of religious content, but to primitive men they were 
all part of the furniture of his supernatural world." 2 

The modern student of religion recognizes that it is 
still the conception of religion as theology that prevails 
in the mind of the public, or at best the modified form 
of this conception as seen in Spencer and the early evo- 
lutionists : 

"Man, we imagine, believes in a god or gods and then 
worships. The real order seems to be that, in a sense 
presently to be explained, he worships, he feels and acts, 
and out of his feeling and action, projected into his 
confused thinking, he develops a god. . . . We ex- 
pect to see 'The heathen in his blindness bow down to 
wood and stone,' but the facts that actually confront 
us are startlingly dissimilar. Bowing down to wood and 
stone is an occupation that exists mainly in the minds 



2^2 THE LARGER ASPECTS OF SOCIALISM 

of hymn- writers. The real savage is more actively en- 
gaged. Instead of asking a god to do what he wants 
done, he does or tries to do it himself ; instead of prayers 
he utters spells. In a word he is busy practicing magic, 
and above all, he is strenuously engaged in dancing 
magical dances. When the savage wants rain or wind 
or sunshine he does not go to church; he summons his 
tribe and they dance a rain-dance or wind-dance or sun- 
dance. When a savage goes to war we must not picture 
his wife at home praying for the absent; instead we must 
picture her dancing the whole night long; not for mere 
joy of heart or to pass the weary hours; she is dancing 
his war-dance to bring him victory." 3 

Here it might appear that the later "evolutionary" 
students of religion were absorbing the pragmatic stand- 
point completely and applying it consistently to their 
whole subject. This might seem all the more probable 
because William James' interpretation of pragmatism 
was especially adapted to religion by James himself. 
And it is undoubtedly true that the following passages, 
where the interpretation of the evolution of religion given 
in the above quotations is continued, do embody the prag- 
matic spirit, as far as they go : 

"Dancing then is to the savage working, doing, and 
the dance is in its origin an imitation or perhaps rather 
an intensification of processes of work. Repetition, 
regular and frequent, constitutes rhythm, and rhythm 
heightens the sense of will-power in action. Rhythmical 
action may even, as seen in the dances of Dervishes, 
produce a condition of ecstasy. Ecstasy among primi- 
tive peoples is a condition much valued; it is often, 
though not always, enhanced by the use of intoxicants. 
Psychologically the savage starts from the sense of his 
own will-power, he stimulates it by every means at his 
command. Feeling his will strongly and knowing noth- 
ing of natural law he recognizes no limits to his own 



THE SOCIALIST EXPLANATION OF RELIGION 233 

power; he feels himself a magician, a god; he does 
not pray, he wills. Moreover, he wills collectively, rein- 
forced by the will and action of his whole tribe. . . . 
As in the world of dreams and ghosts, so in the world of 
mana, space and time offer no obstacles; with magic all 
things are possible. In the one world what you imagine 
is real ; in the other what you desire is ipso facto accom- 
plished. Both worlds are egocentric, megalomaniac, filled 
to the full with unbridled human will and desire." (My 
italics.) 4 

These quotations are thoroughly representative, but 
to make the "evolutionary" standpoint more definite I 
shall refer also, though only in a few words, to the works 
of Levy-Bruhl and Irving King. 

Levy-Bruhl does not so much regard the primitive 
intellect as being subordinate to the feelings and un- 
conscious or habitual activities as consisting in entirely 
different methods of thought. But as these methods 
are non-rational to the last degree his view also fits in 
with the pragmatic standpoint. The title of his chief 
work is significant : "The Mental Functions of Inferior 
Societies." 5 He concludes that the primitive mind is 
"impermeable to experience" and that its mentality is 
"pre-logical." This does not mean that early men are 
wholly irrational in their thinking, but that their mental 
processes are not guided by our logic, or perhaps by 
any logic. They reason very little at all, but their 
memories are extraordinarily developed, and are filled 
chiefly with images of the traditional activities of the 
tribe, that is, with social experience and with social 
habits of self-expression, and not with the experience of 
the individual, which may contradict the wisdom of the 
tribe at nearly every point. 

Levy-Bruhl illustrates the point by the fact that "the 
medicine man always has the last word." If anything 



234 THE LARGER ASPECTS OF SOCIALISM 

goes wrong with his predictions the tribe always comes 
to him again for an explanation, and he is never lacking 
in one. Thus the beliefs of the tribe continue to grow 
according to social necessity, and nothing that can hap- 
pen to individuals can teach them any objective truth. 
The "collective images" of the tribe are thus of a mysti- 
cal character, and Levy-Bruhl even goes so far as to say 
that there is "no conception of space," that, on the con- 
trary, there is "a law of participation" by which the 
savage is able to believe that he actually is an animal 
and even a vegetable — the same conclusion as that of Dr. 
Harrison, though reached by a somewhat different 
process of reasoning. 

The "evolutionists" are more or less pragmatic, but 
all fail to make a thorough-going application of their 
pragmatism. They are all influenced by their study to 
an ultra-sympathetic attitude toward the primitive or 
religious state of mind, to that degree that they find this 
state useful and defensible even in modern society. With 
James, King believes that the religious state of mind 
represents a very important part of the unconscious func- 
tioning of the mind, not only in primitive man, but at 
all times, though not in all individuals. And as all 
pragmatists agree that "the action of the sub-conscious 
is indispensable to the most adequate functioning of con- 
sciousness," this gives to the religious type of mind an 
indispensable role in every society. King says : 

"The religious mind does have a view of reality that 
is closed to one whose mental processes are organized 
from a rigidly rationalistic point of view, not, however, 
because the former has any influx or inspiration from 
a supernatural world, but because its point of view is 
appreciative rather than aggressive and rational." 6 

It is not necessary for the pragmatist to accept this 



THE SOCIALIST EXPLANATION OF RELIGION 235 

conclusion. Unconscious, intuitive, and instinctive ele- 
ments in our psychic nature must be recognized as 
being of equal importance with the conscious, but there 
is no reason, as I shall show, for calling any of these 
elements, when found in developed personalities, re- 
ligious. 

The pragmatist may agree with King that all of our 
science and thinking errs not so much in being too ex- 
tended as in being too limited : 

"Inasmuch as the universe, as we have already said, 
will probably always offer possibilities of experience be- 
yond any actual attainment, it will usually be found to 
be true, in the light of more extended dealing with things, 
that our formulas and symbols err, not in overstating the 
possibilities of experience, but rather in narrowing down 
these possibilities and tending to limit them for all 
time." 7 

But again there is no reason for calling such a point 
of view religious. It is simply a recognition of the 
importance of the imagination. 

Levy-Bruhl reaches a similar conclusion to King and, 
as to the permanent place in life to be filled by religion, 
concludes that certain states of mind, which reach beyond 
the conscious or logical, will always be dependent upon 
religious feeling — just as much in modern times, ap- 
parently, as in the primitive times with which he is chiefly 
concerned. 

William James' views are generally known. Start- 
ing out from the widely accepted theological agnos- 
ticism, he assumed the same compromising, negative, 
agnostic attitude to all supernaturalism and religion, 
and from this point his transition is easy to a creed 
which is after all sufficient to class him as being a re- 
ligionist. The following phrases are typical : "I find 
myself believing that there is 'something in' these never- 



236 THE LARGER ASPECTS OF SOCIALISM 

ending reports of psychical phenomena, although I 
haven't yet the least positive notion of the something. 
It becomes to my mind simply a very worthy problem 
for investigation." After expressing his belief that there 
is something in a thing of which he has not even the 
least positive notion, James states his further belief in 
"real supernormal knowledge," by which he says he 
means knowledge that cannot be traced to the ordinary 
sources of information — the senses namely; and then he 
goes on to define how he conceives the state of mind of 
the automatist or medium of this supernormal knowl- 
edge: 

"My own dramatic sense tends instinctively to picture 
the situation as an interaction between slumbering 
faculties in the automatist's mind and a cosmic environ- 
ment of other consciousness of some sort which is able 
to work upon them. If there were in the universe a 
lot of diffuse soul-stuff, unable of itself to get into con- 
sistent personal form, or to take permanent possession 
of an organism, yet always craving to do so, it might 
get its head into the air, parasitically so to speak, by 
profiting by weak spots in the armor of human minds, 
and slipping in and stirring up there the sleeping tendency 
to personate." 8 

James is here using in close connection terms taken 
from religious philosophy and terms taken from the sci- 
ence of the day, so that it becomes very difficult to say 
which preponderates. His supposition of "a cosmic en- 
vironment of other consciousness of some sort" is at 
once concrete and sufficiently "spiritual" to satisfy even 
the Brahmin or theosophist. At the same time he repeat- 
edly makes such statements as these: "I personally am 
as yet neither a convinced believer in parasitic demons, 
nor a spiritist, nor a scientist, but still remain a psychical 
researcher waiting for more facts before concluding." 



THE SOCIALIST EXPLANATION OF RELIGION 237 

Whether he was an agnostic or whether he built up a 
new religious system of his own, he refused to assume 
a wholly scientific attitude toward religion and prac- 
tically reverted to a position similar, in many respects, 
to many of the German philosophers of half a century 
ago (such as Fechner, whom he ardently admired). 

Let us assume that James is merely an agnostic. This 
agnosticism admits not only a tolerant but even a sympa- 
thetic attitude toward every reversion to religious 
crudity that appears, for what else are the ghosts and 
clairvoyants, the raps and messages from spirits, but the 
modern counterpart of the performances of the early 
priests and medicine men — a connection, indeed, which 
he would scarcely have denied. James himself says of 
all these "phenomena" that they "are always seeming to 
exist and can never be fully explained away" though 
"they also can never be susceptible of full corroboration." 
But for all practical purposes his expectantly waiting at- 
titude had and was intended to have precisely the same 
effect on the public mind as a partial corroboration. 
He was so fascinated even by the repeatedly ex- 
posed Paladina that he argued, especially from this 
case, that "even here the balance of testimony 
seemed to be inclining toward admitting the supernatural 
view." 

James' study of religion did not pretend to be evolu- 
tionary. But the so-called evolutionists have reached 
equally unscientific conclusions. Though they may admit 
the evolution of religious tastes, they do not admit their 
evolution into anything radically different : namely, their 
development from the primitive practices and states of 
consciousness above described to the intuition or imagi- 
nation of the men of a scientific age, which are removed 
as far as conceivable from the "collective images" of the 
primitives (to use a phrase of Levy-Bruhl's) or that 



238 THE LARGER ASPECTS OF SOCIALISM 

traditional thinking which is the very essence of all 
that is properly called religion. 

In failing to recognize that a new stage in men's 
attitude toward religion has appeared, and in failing to 
see that pragmatism requires this new standpoint, which 
is the very opposite of the "evolutionism" of Spencer 
and Haeckel, the semi-pragmatic and later evolutionary 
schools of religious study are neither evolutionary nor 
pragmatic. No psychological habit is permanent in the 
human race, not even the religious form of our sub- 
conscious states; and no thoroughly modern man can 
have any "religious experience." His intuition and his 
imagination must necessarily take other forms. If he 
calls these states religious, only two explanations are pos- 
sible : Either he is a survival and belongs in a former 
generation, or else he misnames himself religious be- 
cause he does not understand enough of the economic and 
social side of history to know what religion is. This last 
is the case of the "evolutionists." 

Dr. Harrison's chief criticism of the school of relig- 
ious study that preceded her (Spencer's) is that it failed 
to recognize that anthropomorphism is not the last stage 
in the development of religion, but lies at its very be- 
ginning : 

"We are all of us born in sin, in that sin which is to 
science 'the seventh and deadliest,' anthropomorphism; 
we are egocentric, ego-pro jective. Hence necessarily we 
make our gods in our own image. Anthropomorphism 
is often spoken of in books on religion and mythology 
as if it were a last climax, a splendid final achievement 
in religious thought. First, we are told we have 
the lifeless object as god (fetichism), then the plant 
or animal (phytomorphism, theriomorphism), and last 
God is incarnate in the human form, divine. This 
way of putting things is misleading. Anthropomorph- 



THE SOCIALIST EXPLANATION OF RELIGION 239 

ism lies at the very beginning of our consciousness." 9 

This is certainly an important truth, but it should be 
immediately supplemented by the still greater pragmatic 
truth. If man's early thinking, including his religion, 
was anthropomorphic, and if, in reaction from this mode 
of thinking, the mechanical science of the middle of the 
nineteenth century, for example that of Spencer and 
Haeckel, allotted to man an entirely inferior place in the 
universe, pragmatism, differing completely from both, is 
anthropoccntric. It does not imagine that man has been 
placed in the center of the universe, but it states that 
he must place himself at the center so far as nature al- 
lows (see Chapter I). 

Dr. Harrison divides the first or anthropomorphic 
period of religious evolution into two stages. [While she 
does not use the nomenclature I am about to adopt it 
will be seen to be perfectly applicable.] The first stage 
of religious growth may be called the stage of custom. 
It is the stage of the tribe rather than of early city 
civilization. Only a few chiefs, medicine men or priests 
are differentiated in their thinking from the rest of the 
tribe. These chiefly build up the prevailing customs, in 
accord of course with conditions and with their private 
interests, and they are themselves to a greater or lesser 
degree the dupes of their own imaginations or of those 
of their predecessors. 

This earlier stage, according to the term employed by 
the prevailing school of religious study, is rather given 
over to practices of magic than to those of religion 
proper : 

"In practice the transition from magic to religion, 
from spell to prayer, has always been found easy. So 
long as mana remains impersonal you order it about; 
when it is personified and bulks to the shape of an over- 
grown man, you drop the imperative and cringe before 



24O THE LARGER ASPECTS OF SOCIALISM 

it. My will be done is magic, Thy will be done is the 
last word in religion. The moral discipline involved in 
the second is momentous, the intellectual advance not 
striking." 10 

The second stage is when society has been well differ- 
entiated into two or more classes, that is when the no- 
madic stage has ceased and cities have begun to appear. 
This is the stage of class rule. Both of these stages are 
anthropomorphic as far as the process of thought 
is concerned, but religious thinking and religious prac- 
tices have come, in the second stage, to fulfill an ut- 
terly different function. The part they play in early 
society has been sufficiently described in the passages 
already quoted. Students of religion, being for the 
most part psychologists rather than sociologists, rarely 
understand at all and never fully understand the role 
religious institutions, religious thinking and religions 
play in this second period. Magic may fulfill what might 
be called a perverted social function ; religion in the stric- 
ter sense of "Thy will be done" means simply the sub- 
jection of the masses to the ruling classes by means of 
religious impositions of which the latter are either fully 
or very largely conscious. Dr. Harrison's conclusion, 
then, as to the value of the moral discipline of this second 
period is a colossal error. Certainly there is discipline, 
but it is the discipline of social servitude. Dr. Harrison 
herself sees that the intellectual advance implied in the 
change from magic to religion is small. And indeed the 
condition of the peasant is very often even inferior to 
that of the primitive, intellectually and morally. Such 
culture as there was in primitive times was more or less 
equally shared among all the members of the tribe. Ser- 
vitude was exceptional and existed only in the case of 
some specially powerful and tyrannical chief or the mo- 
mentary victory of one tribe over another. When para 



THE SOCIALIST EXPLANATION OF RELIGION 24I 

sitism ceases to be casual and becomes organized, and 
society is divided into two or more classes, the condition 
of the lower class will often, though not always, actually 
be inferior to what it was before. An illustration 
is the condition of the slaves in Greece and Rome, 
that is of all those slaves who were taken not 
from other civilizations but from primitive condi- 
tions. It is obvious that the slaves taken from cap- 
tured cities were forced into a lower position physi- 
cally and psychically; this must usually have been the 
case also with many of the more primitive captives, 
e. g., those who were worked in the mines and in the 
galleys. 

According to the "evolutionary" school present so- 
ciety, in the third and last stage in social evolution, is 
the opposite of anthropomorphic in its thinking and feel- 
ing. Religion, under these conditions, is supposed to 
have ceased to be a social sub-conscious state, to become 
an individual sub-conscious state. This point of view 
evidently fits in with the period of individualism through 
which we have just passed. It is also suited to the "State 
Socialism" into which we are entering. For "State So- 
cialism" defends the social repression of the individual's 
economic freedom by the supposition that it is making 
him that much freer in his psychic life — though history 
shows no period in which men have been unfree in one 
respect and not in the other. 

The reality is that neither individualism nor "State 
Socialism" propose to encourage real freedom of 
thought. While religious thinking, like its counterpart, 
purely mechanical thinking, is encouraged, realistic scien- 
tific thinking or pragmatism is discouraged. I have dealt 
with the mechanical conception elsewhere (in Chapter 
I). The religious state of mind has the definite practical 
value to the ruling class, whether under private capital- 



242 THE LARGER ASPECTS OF SOCIALISM 

ism (individualism) or "State Socialism," of inhibiting 
thought in the masses : 

"The very elements in ritual on which Dr. Beck lays 
such stress, imitation, repetition, uniformity and social 
collectivity have been found by the experience of all 
time to have a two-fold influence — they inhibit the in- 
tellect, they stimulate and suggest emotion, ecstasy, 
trance. The Church of Rome knows what she is about 
when she prescribes the telling of the rosary. Mystery 
cults and sacraments, the lineal descendants of magic, 
all contain rites charged with suggestion, with symbols, 
with gestures, with half-understood formularies, with 
all the apparatus of appeal to emotion and will- — the 
more unintelligible they are the better they serve their 
purpose of inhibiting thought. Thus ritual deadens the 
intellect and stimulates will, desire, emotion. 
It is this personal experience, this exaltation, this sense 
of immediate, non-intellectual revelation of mystical one- 
ness with all things that again and again rehabilitates a 
ritual otherwise moribund." n 

I do not imply that the ruling classes or their leaders 
have ever been able deliberately to manufacture a relig- 
ion for their purposes, But among the various relig- 
ions and forms and shades of religion that are constantly 
arising and competing with one another they have had 
the deciding voice as to which is to survive. And so 
it happens that every form of religion from the earliest 
times to the present has had its utility as a means of class 
rule. And if certain extraordinary and all but patho- 
logical states are dignified by the name of "religious ex- 
periences," this is done consciously or unconsciously to 
extend the domain of such religion. 

Certain psychic states undoubtedly exist that are called 
by those who feel them "religious experiences." But 
most of the scientific psychologists view the states that 



THE SOCIALIST EXPLANATION OF RELIGION 243 

usually go under this name either as suggestions from 
without, especially from religious traditions, or as auto- 
suggestions due to some physiological abnormality or 
exceptional strain. Though an evidence of the crushing 
or disintegration of the personality, such states may, of 
course, result in some incidental good. A mystical resig- 
nation, for example, may be a good to one about to 
suffer tortures, though avoidance of tortures is better. 
And rites of magic may indeed give a "magical" power 
of sacrifice and performance to savages, but civilization 
will give them infinitely more. 

The pragmatist and Socialist appreciates as deeply as 
any the enormous potential value to society of many 
incommunicable psychic conditions or "soul states." But 
he objects to calling such perfectly normal states relig- 
ious — not only because this is untrue, but also because it 
is a danger to society. If an individual is dimly con- 
scious of a temperament or a mood through which he 
is able to inspire his fellow men, nothing but good may 
come of it; to give this condition a name which fur- 
nishes him an excuse for preaching to his fellow men 
from some "supernormal" standpoint is likely to make an 
intellectual autocrat of the preacher and intellectual 
slaves of those who follow him. 

These so-called religious states, moreover, are no 
longer essentially religious (whatever they may be 
called) because they are not social manifestations at all 
— whether for good or evil. Ostwald very well remarks 
concerning the God of which such religious experiences 
speak : 

"The certainty of the existence of such a God had to 
be placed in personal feelings. Feeling is everything. 
It follows at once from this that a God felt purely per- 
sonally can exercise no social function, for from the God 



244 THE LARGER ASPECTS OF SOCIALISM 

of one man there is no communication to the God of 
another." 12 

This conception of God, or rather this feeling of God, 
is therefore absolutely lacking on the side which is the 
most important to modern man. Ostwald notes, more- 
over, that the splitting up of religions into more and 
more sects, until finally it becomes a purely individual 
or personal matter, is the very opposite process from 
that of social advance. Science is becoming stronger 
and stronger because its various parts become more and 
more inter-related and integrated. Religion, on the con- 
trary, is disintegrating and its direct social influence di- 
minishing. And as religion ceases to be social it loses 
even its etymological significance, the "tying together" of 
men; just as morality, which is derived from the word 
mores (custom), once it becomes thoroughly individual, 
is no longer morality. 

"The subject matter of the psychology of religion," 
says King, "consists not only of the states of conscious- 
ness called religion [though apparently this is the theory 
of Professor James], but also of all objective expression 
of those states as seen in rituals." From the evolution- 
ary view adopted by King and others, religion is wrapped 
up with other concrete social activities at every point. 
There is, for instance, no such thing as any "innate" 
religious feeling or instinct any more than there is any- 
thing else "innate." Everything is to be accounted for 
by what went before. With Professor W, I. Thomas, 
King argues that the individual's psychic life is more or 
less a direct counterpart of the organization of the world 
about him, that intelligence itself arises from civiliza- 
tion. Therefore, religious practices and ideas corre- 
spond at every point with the state of civilization and 
with the stage of individual development which mankind 



THE SOCIALIST EXPLANATION OF RELIGION 245 

has reached, and there is no part of the life of a given 
society that does not help to explain its religion ; in other 
words, religion is, as Marx said, a social product. 

Fortunately we have in France a prominent Socialist 
who is at the same time an authority of high standing 
on the history of religion and who has expressed the 
Socialist view for us even more clearly. Like King, 
he is totally opposed to James' treatment of religion 
not as a social product but as the result merely of indi- 
vidual psychology. "As to theologians, philosophers 
impregnated with theology like M. James," say Pro- 
fessor Mauss and his collaborator, Professor Hubert, 
"we are not surprised that they speak of religious senti- 
ment as a specific thing. Religious sentiment, they say, 
is religious experience, experience of God, and the latter 
corresponds to a special sense, a sixth sense, that of the 
divine persons, which we will not discuss here. It is 
no longer a question of fact but of faith." 13 

These writers object strongly to those students of 
religion who seek to look upon it as being a single his- 
toric whole, independent of all other features of the 
environment : "They go straight to similarities and 
search everywhere only the human, common, in a word 
the commonplace. We stop methodically, on the con- 
trary, at the characteristic differences of environment ; 
and it is through these characteristics that we hope to 
catch glimpses of laws." From this modern standpoint 
the basis of the study of religion must be, not any gen- 
eral or preconceived ideas as to just which elements in 
any religious practice or system should be taken as 
essentially religious, but rather the state of society out 
of which religion grows. 

This pragmatic method and attitude of Professors 
Hubert and Mauss is profoundly social. They show, 
for instance, that all early religions consist in elements 



246 THE LARGER ASPECTS OF SOCIALISM 

that are thoroughly contradictory to one another, but 
they do not altogether condemn them on that account : 

"These contradictions are as inevitable as they are use- 
ful. For example, in order that a charm can be con- 
ceived of as acting at once at a distance and through 
contact, it was necessary to constitute the idea of a mana 
at once extended and not extended. The dead man is 
at once in another world and in his tomb where he is 
worshiped. Such notions, vicious for us, are an in- 
dispensable synthesis where sentiments and sensations, 
equally necessary, but at the same time contradictory, 
balance one another. The contradictions come from the 
richn.ess of content of these notions and do not stop them 
at all from containing for believers the characteristics 
both of the empirical and of the rational. This is why 
religions and systems of magic have held together and 
have continually and everywhere developed into science, 
philosophy, technical arts, on the one side, into laws and 
myths on the other. They have thus powerfully aided 
in the formation, in the maturing of the human mind." 14 

Religion, in a word, has been a sort of matrix in 
which the germs of truth and error were inextricably 
intertangled — a view that is at once scientific, prag- 
matic, and Socialistic. 

Religion is social both in its effects and in its causes. 

"The manner of thinking which has held religious sen- 
timents together and has constantly developed them arises 
out of social forces, tradition and language which prac- 
tically impose such methods of thinking on the average 
individual." 15 

The illustration used by Hubert and Mauss makes 
still more clear the fundamentally and essentially social 
character of religion, from whatever angle it is viewed : 

"Jupiter is at once a man and heaven, without men- 
tioning diverse animals. The juxtaposition is contra- 



THE SOCIALIST EXPLANATION OF RELIGION 247 

dictory, but the raison d'etre of a notion, like that of 
God, is precisely to reconcile in the mind of the believer 
ideas and sentiments which conflict with one another, 
and of which he does not wish to abandon anything. 
Thus from the beginning collective ideas developed into 
myths just as the general idea in the individual mind 
cannot be thought of without concrete images." 1G 

Surely this and the passage above quoted show that 
the modern evolutionist and the Socialist view attribute 
an enormous importance to religion. Socialists, at least, 
are no less disposed than the religious to recognize the 
important role religion has played — for good and for ill 
— in the past. 

As soon as we study the history of religions from a 
thoroughly social standpoint, that is when we regard 
religion as a product of the evolution of society, we 
get out of the quagmire of interested or unclear thought 
in which the non-evolutionists and early evolutionists 
were involved. A truly evolutionary study of religious 
thinking is, in one word, a study of the evolution of 
society : "Different religious forms go- back to different 
social situations rather than to preceding religious 
forms" (King). And there is nothing whatever in the 
constitution of modern society or of modern science 
which gives religious thinking the slightest theoretical 
foothold, leaves any place for religious practices, or 
gives any lasting value to religious states of soul. 

The scientific defenders of religion themselves admit 
that in the primitive man's life "the social organization is 
practically the universe." Religion was then even from 
the earliest times merely a reflex of social forms : 

"The religious acts and ideas are themselves an or- 
ganic part of the activities of he social body. They are, 
in fact, social acts. Under certain circumstances customs 
become religious or acquire religious values, . , . 



248 THE LARGER ASPECTS OF SOCIALISM 

Thus a god could not be conceived as a father where 
marriage was so unstable that fatherhood was no 
recognized feature of the social structure, nor as a king 
among people into whose experience the institution of 
kingship had never entered. . . . But we may go 
even farther than this and maintain that religious beliefs 
and practices are not merely modeled upon the analogy 
of a people's economic and social life. The religious life 
is this social life in one of its phases. It is an organic 
part of the activity of the social body, not merely some- 
thing built upon it. The religions of all the 
peoples of antiquity were inseparable from their political 
organization, a fact particularly true of the ancient 
Egyptians and of the Israelites." 17 

A more detailed explanation of the effect of the social 
organization of the Israelites on their religion may be 
found in Louis Wallis' "Sociology of the Bible," or his 
"Examination of Society from the Standpoint of Evo- 
lution," where he shows that even the most brilliant of 
the writers of the Old Testament, namely the prophets 
or the individuals who wrote concerning them, repre- 
sented the smaller aristocracy of Israel as against the 
ruling class. The gods of the ruling class had been 
taken bodily from Babylon, Tyre and other city civiliza- 
tions and were then adapted to the agriculturists of 
Palestine, that is were used as the props of tyranny. But 
the small aristocracy or gentry, both in Palestine and 
elsewhere, created a new religion in Christianity, which, 
while adapted to their purposes, was equally tyrannical, 
as far as the rest of the population was concerned. 
The religion of Jesus, as Wallis says, suggested indi- 
vidual rights, but those rights were not secured unless 
the individual was worthy : "The individual in the 
abstract had rights, but only some individuals got rights 
in the concrete." As Wallis convincingly demonstrates : 



THE SOCIALIST EXPLANATION OF RELIGION 249 

"No straining of points can extract a properly social 
organic doctrine from his teaching." 

Paul followed along the same road on which Jesus 
had set out, as we may see in the following well-known 
passages : 

"Slaves, be obedient to them that according to the 
flesh are your lords, knowing that whatsoever good 
things each one doeth, the same shall he receive again 
from the Lord, whether he be a slave or a freeman." 
(Ephesians, 6:5, 8.) 

"Slaves, obey in all things them that are your lords 
according to the flesh." (Colossians, 3:22.) 

"Let as many as are slaves under the yoke count their 
masters worthy of all honor." (1 Timothy, 6:1.) 

"Exhort slaves to be in subjection to their own mas- 
ters, and to be well pleasing in all things, not gainsaying, 
not purloining, but showing all good fidelity." (Titus, 
2:9.) 

All these passages exhort slaves to honor and obey 
their masters. And it is also to be noted that Paul took 
slave-holders into the church without insisting that they 
liberate their slaves, for he only recommends mild treat- 
ment — and a great many pagans had gone that far. 

Anyone who has fully grasped the social explanation 
of the religions of the past will explain in the same way 
the religions of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, 
and even the "individual religious experiences" of the 
present. 

If the pragmatist must deny the continued necessity 
at the present time for the existence of religion in any 
form, even that of the entirely mystical and purely in- 
dividual "religious experience," he denies still more 
strongly all the ordinary doctrines that have usually 
gone with religion, for not only are most of these de- 
nied even by James and by the "evolutionary" students 



25O THE LARGER ASPECTS OE SOCIALISM 

of religion but most of them are rejected also by ad- 
vanced religionists, such as Dr. Charles W. Eliot. 

It is necessary to distinguish sharply, however, the 
grounds on which the pragmatist rejects religious dog- 
mas from the grounds even of the broadest religionist or 
non-pragmatic evolutionist. Such typically modern (but 
non-pragmatic) writers as Maeterlinck and Henry James 
criticize the doctrine of immortality of the soul very 
brilliantly, but from the standpoint that we do not want 
to give such a high attribute as immortality to such an 
insignificant thing as a human soul. Both of course are 
far from belittling humanity in the purely pessimistic 
spirit of a Schopenhauer, but to both man appears to be 
very small in comparison with the universe. Pragmat- 
ism, on the contrary, instead of denying such a high 
attribute as immortality to such a small entity as the 
human soul, would deny the value and even the con- 
ceivability of such an attribute as immortality, although 
insisting on giving some of the highest attributes that are 
conceivable to the human soul. Thus the pragmatist dis- 
misses the whole controversy in its ancient form, just 
as he avoids all historic controversies, by displacing old 
questions for new ones. If he does not desire and can- 
not even conceive immortality, then of course he is not 
interested at all in the question whether it is an attri- 
bute of the human soul or not. 

It must be remembered that even Emerson, a thinker 
most widely separated from Socialism, renounced this 
doctrine as crude and unspiritual, long before modern 
pragmatism had appeared. He reminded us that Jesus 
himself never "uttered a syllable concerning the duration 
of the soul" : 

"It was left to his disciples to sever duration from 
moral elements and to teach the immortality of the soul 
as a doctrine and maintain it by evidence. The moment 



THE SOCIALIST EXPLANATION OF RELIGION 2$l 

the doctrine of the immortality of the soul is separately 
taught man is already fallen. In the flowing of love, in 
the adoration of humility there is no question of con- 
tinuance. For the soul is true to itself and the man in 
whom it is shed abroad cannot wander from the present 
which is infinite to a future which would be infinite." 18 

Indeed, Mrs. Gilman has pointed out that the demand 
for an immortal soul is due to ultra-individualistic in- 
stincts : 

"There was evidently no room for the soul — no ex- 
planation for the soul — in one human life as we see it 
before us, but still, said we, if we make a human life 
long enough there will be room for the soul. That will 
give us time to understand it and to justify these quench- 
less aspirations, these boundless desires. It did not 
occur to us that if we made it wide enough it would have 
the same effect. Our illimitable egoism, being unable 
to satisfy its own demands by an earthly means, has 
postulated an eternal ego with whole ranges of planetary 
systems to feed in, and hopes in course of eternity, time 
not being enough to satisfy itself." 19 

Immortality, in the light of pragmatism, could only 
mean spiritual death, and the longing for immortality 
can only come from the dead or dying part of ourselves. 
To preserve a human being as he is would be to destroy 
all the meaning he ever had. Nor can any individual 
wholly intelligent and alive and who knows what we 
know to-day desire "personal immortality" any more 
than he could desire the present age to continue forever. 
To yearn to perpetuate the present or any part of the 
present is evidently to fear the growth and develop- 
ment of the future, and to fear growth can only mean 
that to the degree of our fear we have ceased to grow. 

Nor can pragmatists take up the agnostic's attitude 



252 THE LARGER ASPECTS OF SOCIALISM 

of intellectual renunciation on this or any other dogma. 
Horace Traubel quotes Ingersoll, for example, as hav- 
ing said to him in a personal conversation : "The idea 
of immortality is no more unreasonable than reason- 
able," thus taking what might be called the agnostic's 
compromise toward it. To this Traubel remarks: 

"I don't say I know all the forewords and afterpieces 
of creation. But I have learned not to drop curtains 
and acknowledge frontiers." 20 

No pragmatist can take exception to this statement, 
but the burden of proof is on those who assert immor- 
tality or any other theory, and if they prove nothing it 
does not leave the honors even, but is just as if the 
idea had never been suggested. A confession of our 
ignorance of the totality of the universe, such as Traubel 
makes, helps the defenders of immortality no more than 
it helps the defenders of all other dogmas no matter how 
unlikely or fantastic they may be. 

So also with the concept God. The Socialist and 
pragmatist can be neither an atheist nor an agnostic. 
As he does not admit the importance or human interest 
in the question, Is there or is there not a God ? he neither 
agrees with the atheist in taking the negative of this 
proposition nor with the agnostic in considering that 
the affirmative has as much chance of being right as the 
negative (for this is agnosticism in its commonly ac- 
cepted form). 

I have pointed out that the mechanistic and the re- 
ligious standpoints appear as equally retrogressive to the 
pragmatist. Aside from the inherent weakness of the 
mechanical view, the conversion of. many of its chief 
adherents into believers in some kind of God bears out 
my statement. For example, a critic (Hopps, in the 
Contemporary Review) says of Haeckel — in reviewing 



THE SOCIALIST EXPLANATION OF RELIGION 2$$ 

his "Scientific Confession of Faith" — that he now seems 
"almost nervously anxious to get God into his monism" : 

"Ever more clearly," says Haeckel, "we are compelled 
by reflection to recognize that God is not to be placed 
over against the material world as an external being, 
but must be placed as a 'divine power' or 'moving spirit' 
within the cosmos itself." 

But some of the leading scientists of England have 
become still more openly reactionary. Not only Sir 
Oliver Lodge, but even the "Socialist," Alfred Russell 
Wallace, are engaged in building up new religious sys- 
tems. In "The World of Life" Wallace assumes a 
"mind-developing power from all eternity," and from 
this assumption he very easily comes to the conclusion 
that at all periods "beings of infinite power, what we 
should call Gods, must have resulted" : 

"Long ages before the first rudiment of life appeared 
on the earth, long before all the suns we see had become 
suns, the infinite development had been at work and must 
have produced gods of infinite degrees of power, any 
one of whom would presumably be quite capable of 
starting such a solar system as ours, or one immensely 
larger and better, and of so determining the material 
constitution of an 'earth' as to initiate and guide a 
course of development which would have resulted in a 
far higher being than man ... a body of what we 
may term organizing spirits who would be charged with 
the duty of so influencing the myriads of cell-souls as 
to carry out automatically their part of the work with 
accuracy and certainty. . . . The vast whole is 
therefore a manifestation of His power — perhaps of His 
very self — but by the agency of His ministering angels 
through many descending grades of intelligence and 
power." ("The World of Life; a Manifestation of 
Creative Power, Directive Mind and Ultimate Pur- 
pose.") 



254 THE LARGER ASPECTS OF SOCIALISM 

It has long been common in English-speaking coun- 
tries for scientific exponents of evolution in some other 
field to fail totally to apply the evolutionary standpoint 
to religion. Take for example the following quotation 
from Herbert Spencer's "First Principles." Certainly 
Spencer was one of the first to propose that religion 
should be studied as being in the process of evolution. 
Yet his views of religion were dogmatic and the oppo- 
site of evolutionary : 

"The consciousness of an inscrutable power, mani- 
fested to us through all phenomena, has been growing 
ever clearer, and must ultimately be freed from its im- 
perfections. The certainty that on the one hand such 
a power exists, while on the other hand its nature 
transcends intuition and is beyond imagination, is the 
certainty toward which intelligence has from the first 
been progressing. To this conclusion science inevitably 
arrives as it reaches its confines ; while to this conclusion 
religion is irresistibly driven by criticism." 21 

What could be less evolutionary than the assumption 
that our ideas on these subjects would some day reach 
"perfection," unless it is Spencer's attempt to tell us 
what this perfection will be? 

James' idea is "that there is a God but that he is 
finite either in power or knowledge, or in both at once," 
and that "these are the terms in which common men 
have carried on their active commerce with God." This 
is precisely the reverse of the attitude of Spencer, and 
far more reactionary, as James is interested solely in 
the very crudest conceptions, or rather uses, of the idea 
of God, while Spencer is for attenuating it even be- 
yond the point of the most advanced theological specu- 
lations. Spencer's creed would unintentionally further 
the evolution of religion toward philosophy among the 
more educated and thoughtful, while it would take away 



THE SOCIALIST EXPLANATION OF RELIGION 255 

whatever human interest and value there is in religion 
for the ordinary man. James 1 creed would have exactly 
the opposite effect in both cases. Few educated persons 
would care for a "finite" God, and James' unconscious 
patronizing of the beliefs of "common men" could only 
have the effect of keeping them in their superstition and 
ignorance. 

It may be that this new respect for the supernatural 
flourishes and grows because the upper classes feel, in a 
spirit of sincere patronage, that there is a need for some 
kind of religion for the masses. It may be that other 
persons of these classes subconsciously feel the truth 
that some religion must be taught even if it is necessary 
for this purpose to tell the people the "magnificent lie" 
recommended by Plato. Or it may be that there is no 
such motive, even an unconscious one, and that the ex- 
planation of this extraordinary reversion is to be traced 
not to any moral relapse but rather to a mental confu- 
sion. There can be no doubt that the refusal of many 
of the most cultured and educated fully to recognize, 
or their inability fully to grasp, the great central truths 
of our time, those of evolution and Socialism, lead neces- 
sarily to a general confusion in their thinking. Which- 
ever of these explanations is the correct one there can 
be no doubt that the tendency to revert to supernatural- 
ism is to be traced to the separation of the ruling classes 
from the rest of society either in interest or in mental 
attitude. 

"There are other fields in life more important than the 
healing of pain," says Dr. H. R. Marshall : "In the long 
run it will be better for the race to risk the tendency of 
some suffering among weaklings which magic can wholly 
relieve, rather than to curtail clear thinking among the 
common people." 22 

Men of science have already recognized the reaction- 



256 THE LARGER ASPECTS OF SOCIALISM 

ary effect of such views as those of James on philosophy 
and in the intellectual world. Professor Witmer of the 
University of Pennsylvania writes that "such teachings 
and their popularity must be viewed as a craze which, 
spreading from some academic walls like a psychic con- 
tagion among the laity, is rapidly reducing the mentality 
of the American people to a mediaeval and even pagan 
obscurantism or imbecility." He argues, and doubtless 
the majority of the scientifically educated would agree 
with him, that James practically "opened a campaign for 
occultism." 23 

Speaking of James in connection with other profess- 
ors of philosophy at Harvard, Professor Perrin of Col- 
umbia University writes : "Better scholars or more pro- 
ductive personalities than these men it would be diffi- 
cult to find, and yet the metaphysics they teach is un- 
real, and as it has the effect of crippling the minds of 
our American youth it should be exposed. Philosophy 
is not a thing apart from scientific cause and effect." 
Professor Perrin addresses the aristocracy of learning. 
The Socialist would remind him that this aristocracy is 
bound up with that of wealth and privilege, and that 
the effort to found a religion or a philosophy more or 
less independent of fact is as old as the world, and 
is likely to continue as long as society is divided into 
classes. For as long as it is practicable to keep super- 
naturalism and metaphysics alive they will be used 
by the ruling class as a foundation on which to build 
up a body of doctrine for maintaining the masses in 
ignorance, and for furnishing some makeshift that will 
serve in their own minds as a defence of the iniquities 
of class rule. 



XI 

THE NEW EDUCATION AND THE OLD 

Public education in Germany and France, and the 
other countries where Socialism is most developed, is so 
backward that the Socialists of those countries have not 
yet fully evolved their educational ideal. The principal 
German Socialist book on public schools, * as well as 
Bebel's references to it in his "Woman," and the dis- 
cussion one reads in the German Socialist press, are 
concerned primarily with raising the German level up 
to that of the United States and freeing the German 
system from evils we have already largely overcome, 
This does not mean that Continental Socialists have no 
distinctively Socialist educational ideals, but only that 
they realize that an intermediate stage of "State Social- 
ist" school reform lies between them and the first steps 
in the establishment of a Socialist school system. 

The Socialist philosophy necessarily leads to an en- 
tirely revolutionary attitude toward education in all its 
phases, and if we have no works of the first importance 
devoted exclusively to education, this arises not only 
from the cause just mentioned, but also from the fact 
that several of the best known writers on educational 
questions are exceptionally radical, and even Socialistic, 
and between them have gone to the full length of what 
Socialism requires. If we take for example those writ- 
ers who are having the greatest influence on the Ameri- 
can public to-day, we find that their ideals, when broadly 

257 



258 THE LARGER ASPECTS OF SOCIALISM 

interpreted, somewhat expanded, and related together, 
form a complete Socialistic whole. 

The most suggestive and Socialistic feature of Montes- 
sori's method, for exemple, is her "real social enter- 
prises," in which the children are taught at the very 
earliest years to wait on the table, to clean house, etc. 
The activity of the children is the point of departure, 
as in Froebel's kindergartens, but this activity is made 
still more social by concerning itself, as far as possible, 
with realities, with work the utility of which the child 
can understand. The Montessori method has also be- 
come intensely realistic and social at another point, for 
the chief and earliest application of the trained senses is 
to teach the very small child, from two and a half to 
five years of age, to write and to read. And far from 
being a merely formal exercise, which writing and read- 
ing are in the ordinary education, Montessori has found 
that they both answer to a real need in the very small 
child's life. Almost as soon as speech is at all well de- 
veloped this need, she has discovered, appears. And it 
seems that the objection to teaching children to read or 
write too early, which was so strongly felt by Dewey 
and others, was due more to the immense difficulties 
met in the older system than to the absence of a suffi- 
ciently intense interest and need upon the part of the 
children. The real social activities prepare the children 
immediately for life itself. The teaching of reading 
and of writing in the kindergarten years also prepare the 
child for its child life, but to a still greater degree they 
prepare it for taking up all the later school activities, 
in proportion as the child becomes ripe for them, and 
as these later activities are also a part of child life, this 
means a revolutionary step in integrating the child's 
whole development. 

One of the most eloquent, philosophic, and Socialistic 



THE NEW EDUCATION AND THE OLD 259 

of Montessori's passages is that in which she shows the 
complete revolution in school material and equipment 
and the enormously increased expenditure that her sys- 
tem, as well as common sense, necessitates : 

"The tendency toward social liberty is most evident, 
and manifests itself on every hand. The leaders of the 
people make it their slogan, the laboring masses repeat 
the cry, scientific and socialistic publications voice the 
same movement, our journals are full of it. The under- 
fed workman does not ask for a tonic, but for better 
economic conditions which shall prevent malnutrition. 
The miner who, through the stooping position main- 
tained during many hours of the day, is subject to in- 
guinal rupture, does not ask for an abdominal support, 
but demands shorter hours and better working condi- 
tions in order that he may be able to lead a healthy 
life like other men. 

"And when, during this same social epoch, we find 
that the children in our schoolrooms are working amid 
unhygienic conditions, so poorly adapted to normal de- 
velopment that even the skeleton becomes deformed, 
our response to this terrible revelation is an orthopedic 
bench. It is much as if we offered to the miner the 
abdominal brace, or arsenic to the underfed workman. 

"It behooves us to think what may happen to the spirit 
of the child who is condemned to grow in conditions 
so artificial that his very bones may become deformed. 
When we speak of the redemption of the workingman, 
it is always understood that beneath the most apparent 
form of suffering, such as poverty of the blood, or rup- 
tures, there exists that other wound from which the soul 
of the man who is subjected to any form of slavery 
must suffer. It is at this deeper wrong that we airn 
when we say that the workman must be redeemed through 
liberty. We know only too well that when a man's 
very blood has been consumed or his intestines wasted 
away through his work, his soul must have lain oppressed 



260 THE LARGER ASPECTS OF SOCIALISM 

in darkness, rendered insensible, or it may be killed 
within him. The moral degradation of the slave is, above 
all things, the weight that opposes the progress of hu- 
manity — humanity striving to rise and held back by 
this great burden. The cry of redemption speaks far 
more clearly for the souls of men than for their bodies. 

"What shall we say then, when the question before 
us is that of educating children? 

"We know only too well the sorry spectacle of the 
teacher who, in the ordinary schoolroom, must pour 
certain cut and dried facts into the heads of the scholars. 
In order to succeed in this barren task she finds it 
necessary to discipline her pupils into immobility and 
to force their attention. Prizes and punishments are 
ever ready and efficient aids to the master who must 
force into a given attitude of mind and body those who 
are condemned to be his listeners." 2 

Just as Montessori moves directly against mental ser- 
vitude by prohibiting the teacher all kinds of undue 
interference with the spontaneous activities of the child, 
so she attempts, by scientific methods, by an elaborate 
equipment, and by a sufficiency of highly trained and 
thoroughly qualified teachers, to free them from that ser- 
vitude to material things to which every untrained being 
is subject. This is the way she explains the necessity 
for real social enterprises, such as dressing, washing, 
waiting on the table, etc. Of the child who has not been 
taught to do these things she says: 

"He is still dependent, since he is not yet able to walk', 
and cannot wash and dress himself, and since he is not 
yet able to ask for things in a language which is clear 
and easily understood. He is still in this period to a 
great extent the slave of everyone. By the age of 
three, however, the child should have been able to render 
himself to a great extent independent and free. That 



THE NEW EDUCATION AND THE OLD 261 

we have not yet thoroughly assimilated the highest con- 
cept of the term independence is due to the fact that 
the social form in which we live is still servile. In an 
age of civilization where servants exist the concept of 
that form of life which is independence cannot take 
root or develop freely. Even so in the time of slavery 
the concept of liberty was distorted and darkened. Our 
servants are not our dependents, rather it is we who are 
dependent upon them." 3 

Both in her insistence on the importance of the influ- 
ence of material surroundings and of the necessity of 
mastering them, and in her fundamental and persistent 
protest against servants, Montessori is a thoroughgoing 
Socialist. She continues : 

"Any nation that accepts the idea of servitude and be- 
lieves that it is an advantage for man to be served 
by man admits servility as an instinct, and indeed we 
all too easily lend ourselves to obsequious service, giving 
to it such complimentary names as courtesy, politeness, 
charity. 

"In reality, he who is served is limited in his inde- 
pendence. This concept will be the foundation of the 
dignity of the man of the future : T do not wish to 
be served because I am not an impotent.' And this 
idea must be gained before men can feel themselves 
to be really free. . . 

"We habitually serve children ; and this is not only an 
act of servility toward them, but it is dangerous, since 
it tends to suffocate their useful spontaneous activity. 
We are inclined to believe that children are like puppets, 
and we wash them and feed them as if they were 
dolls. 

"The peril of servilism and dependence lies not only in 
that 'useless consuming of life,' which leads to help- 
lessness, but in the development of individual traits which 
indicate all too plainly a regrettable perversion and de- 



262 THE LARGER ASPECTS OF SOCIALISM 

generation of the normal man. I refer to the domineer- 
ing and tyrannical behavior with examples of which we 
are all only too familiar. The domineering habit de- 
velops side by side with helplessness. It is the outward 
sign of the state of feeling of him who conquers through 
the work of others. Thus it often happens that the 
master is a tyrant toward his servant. It is the spirit 
of the task-master toward the slave." 4 

This to be sure is a mere repetition, as far as the lan- 
guage is concerned, of some of the passages of Rous- 
seau. But Rousseau was not a Socialist and did not 
represent the point of view of the propertyless masses. 
While arguing against servitude he never remotely 
hinted at the possibility of doing away with servants 
either for the child or for the man — and indeed we may 
easily understand why that possibility was scarcely con- 
ceivable before the age of steam. 

Finally Montessori realizes of education both on its 
material and spiritual sides that it must concern itself 
equally with the school and the home. Her combina- 
tion of school and model tenements, which she calls 
"The Child's House," is undoubtedly a long step toward 
a collective home — and, as the home has been a purely 
individualistic and an ultra-individualistic institution, 
this means practically its disappearance and absorption 
into a higher social form (see Chapter XIII). Montes- 
sori does not subject the school to the home or the home 
to the school, but brings them together in a common col- 
lective plan : 

"We have put the school within the home; and this is 
not all. We have placed it within the home as the 
property of the collectivity, leaving under the eyes of 
the parents the whole life of the teacher in the accom- 
plishment of her mission. 



THE NEW EDUCATION AND THE OLD 263 

"This idea of the collective ownership of the school is 
new and very beautiful and profoundly educational. 

"Another advance made by the 'Children's Houses' 
as an institution is related to scientific pedagogy. This 
branch of pedagogy, heretofore, being based upon the 
anthropological study of the pupil it is to educate, has 
touched only a few of the positive questions which tend 
to transform education. For a man is not only a 
biological but a social product, and the social environ- 
ment of individuals in the process of education is the 
home." 5 

Montessori is conscious that her educational plan 
works toward a collective and even toward a com- 
munistic form of home (see quotation in Chapter XIII). 
Undoubtedly the most serious limitation in the present 
education of children is outside of the school and not in 
it, undeveloped and stunted as the schools are. 

In spite of some apparent contradictions, the appli- 
cation of Dewey's principles to primary education fol- 
lows perfectly after the use of the Montessori methods 
in the kindergarten years. If Dewey objected to the 
early teaching of writing and reading, even at the age 
it is ordinarily done in the public schools, this was 
when writing was taught by a laborious method that re- 
quired years, and when reading was not acquired, as 
in the Montessori method, in connection with writing 
and as a part of social games. And while the early 
reading and writing of Montessori would not neces- 
sarily conflict with Dewey's "social occupations," even if 
both were used together, as they may be, it is obvious 
that the Montessori system is by its nature more adapted 
to the earlier, and the Dewey system to the later, period. 
Montessori's "real social activities" are limited in scope, 
though they could easily be extended to include, 
during the primary years, cooking, sewing, housekeep- 



264 THE LARGER ASPECTS OF SOCIALISM 

ing and an elementary introduction to all domestic sci- 
ence, art, and economy. On the other hand, Dewey's 
idea of introducing, as the basis of education, the co- 
operative work of the children in primitive or simplified 
industries is limited in the kindergarten period by the 
fact that very few such occupations or industries can be 
found that are adapted to very small children. On the 
other hand, it can be imagined how much interest would 
be added to the Dewey system if the children were al- 
ready able to read, for instance, illustrated books deal- 
ing with the stories (history and geography) of the 
various occupations practiced — and doubtless both read- 
ing and writing could be used in innumerable other 
ways. 

Let me review the general principles upon which 
Dewey's system rests before dealing with its concrete 
activities. For, unlike Montessori, Dewey is interested 
in the whole problem of education, though his interest 
seems to center chiefly on its intermediate stages. First 
of all he regards it as the function of education not only 
to shape the individual, but equally to shape society 
itself. And there is little doubt that this critical and 
active attitude toward present society, which is basic and 
must certainly be introduced at some stage in education, 
should begin to be taught as soon as reading and writing 
have been mastered : 

"Education has not only to safeguard an individual 
against the besetting erroneous tendencies of his own 
mind — its rashness, presumption and preference of what 
chimes with self-interest to objective evidence — but also 
to undermine and destroy the accumulated and self- 
perpetuating prejudices of long ages. When social life 
in general has become more reasonable, more imbued 
with rational conviction, and less moved by stiff authority 
and blind passion, educational agencies wiU work in 



THE NEW EDUCATION AND THE OLD 265 

harmony with the educative influence exercised willy- 
nilly by other social surroundings upon an individual's 
habits of thought and belief. At present the work of 
teaching must not only transform natural tendencies into 
trained habits of thought, but must also fortify the mind 
against irrational tendencies current in the social environ- 
ment and help displace erroneous habits already pro- 
duced." 6 

This element in Dewey's system is, I believe, the most 
fundamental of all, as evidently it is the most Social- 
istic. The training of the child for participation in 
social life and at the same time to control social life is 
the key to his whole system. And aside from this pur- 
pose he points out that education should have no moral 
end or aim: 

"The child must be educated for the society of his 
generation. The society of which the child is to be a 
member is, in the United States, a democratic and pro- 
gressive society. The child must be educated for leader- 
ship as well as for obedience. He must have power of 
self-direction and power of directing others, power of 
administration, ability to assume positions of responsi- 
bility. This necessity of educating for leadership is as 
great on the industrial as on the political side. [How 
contradictory to the employers' conception of industrial 
education!] 

"New inventions, new machines, new methods of 
transportation and intercourse are making over the 
whole scene of action year by year. It is an impossibility 
to educate the child for any fixed station in life. So 
far as education is conducted unconsciously or con- 
sciously on this basis it results in fitting the future citizen 
for no station in life, but makes him a drone, a hanger- 
on, or an actual retarding influence in the onward move- 
ment. Instead of caring for himself and for others, he 
becomes one who has himself to be cared for. Here, 



266 THE LARGER ASPECTS OF SOCIALISM 

too, the ethical responsibility of the school on the social 
side must be interpreted in the broadest and freest spirit ; 
it is equivalent to that training of the child which will 
give him such possession of himself that he may take 
charge of himself ; may not only adapt himself to the 
changes that are going on, but have power to shape 
and direct them. 

"Apart from participation in social life, the school has 
no moral end or aim. As long as we confine ourself to 
the school as an isolated institution, we have no direct- 
ing principles, because we have no object. For example, 
the end of education is said to be the harmonious develop- 
ment of all the powers of the individual. Here no 
reference to social life or membership is apparent, and 
yet many think we have in it an adequate and thorough- 
going definition of the goal of education. But if this 
definition be taken independently of social relationship 
we have no way of telling what is meant by any one 
of the terms employed. We do not know what a power 
is ; we do not know what development is ; we do not 
know what harmony is. A power is a power only with 
reference to the use to which it is put, the function it 
has to serve. . . . 

"The child ought to have the same motives for right 
doing and to be judged by the same standards in the 
school as the adult in the wider social life to which 
he belongs. Interest in community welfare, an interest 
that is intellectual and practical, as well as emotional — 
an interest, that is to say, in carrying these principles 
into execution — is the moral habit to which all the 
special school habits must be related if they are to be 
animated by the breadth of life." (My italics.) 7 

The most noteworthy thing in these passages is that 
the child is to be trained not only to have interest in the 
community welfare but to re-shape and remodel the 
community. The child is not taught to regard even 
society or the human race as authorities which stand 



THE NEW EDUCATION AND THE OLD 267 

above him, but as things over which he will have a voice 
and some control. 

Of course this puts Dewey in complete antagonism 
to existing systems of public instruction, which even 
in their ideals propose no more than to shape the child 
to the needs of society. His words remind us of those 
of the martyred Spanish educator, Francisco Ferrer: 

"Let us not fear to say that we want men capable 
of evolving without stopping, capable of destroying and 
renewing their environments without cessation, of re- 
newing themselves also; men whose intellectual inde- 
pendence will be their greatest force, who will attach 
themselves to nothing; always ready to accept what is 
best, happy in the triumph of new ideas, aspiring to live 
multiple lives in one life. Society fears such men; we 
must not hope then it will ever want an education able 
to give them to us." 

Certainly we must all recognize that the ideal of the 
ruling classes which everywhere control our schools is 
not to produce independent and fearless men of this 
type, but merely the industrious and serviceable. The 
forces that control society do not desire to produce 
human beings who promise to further progress to such a 
degree as to threaten their domination. Their method is 
either to shorten the curriculum or to limit its extension 
to "practical" subjects and those that are in the interest 
of the government and industry as they are, rather than 
that of the child and of the society that is to be. 

As opposed to these and all other reactionary tenden- 
cies, Dewey advocates "the development of the positive 
creed of life implicit in democracy and in science" and 
the "transformation of all practical instrumentalities of 
education till they are in harmony with these ideas." 
Until we have gone further along this line, "it is better 
that our schools should do nothing than that they should 



268 THE LARGER ASPECTS OF SOCIALISM 

do wrong things. It is better for them to confine them- 
selves to their obviously urgent tasks than that they 
should, under the name of spiritual culture, form habits 
of mind which are at war with those of democracy and 
science. It is not laziness or cynicism which calls for 
this laisser-faire policy, it is honesty, courage, sobriety, 
and faith." 8 

It is not alone the all-pervasive influence of class rule 
against which Dewey contends, but also the reigning 
educational philosophy of the day which, even when 
inspired by no reactionary motive, suffers, as a rule, from 
the complete absence of a scientific, democratic, and so- 
cial standpoint. 

"The school practice of to-day has a definite psycho- 
logical basis," says Dewey, "the greatest obstacle to 
the introduction of certain educational reforms is pre- 
cisely the permeating persistence of the underlying 
psychological creed." This creed is, in a word, the in- 
dividualistic and, at the bottom, non-evolutionary psy- 
chology of the day, in which the individual's psychical 
life is analyzed apart from his social environment and 
apart from the history of civilization and especially of 
its later scientific, democratic, and social phase. 

While laying greater emphasis than others do on the 
difference between the child and the adult, Dewey would 
also have us learn more than we do as to the correct 
way of dealing with the child from practical adult life — 
where the individualistic and non-evolutionary psychol- 
ogy that dominates our education has no effect : 

"No one seriously questions that with an adult, power 
and control are obtained through realization of personal 
ends and problems, through personal selection of means 
and materials that are relevant, and through personal 
adaptation and application of what is thus selected, to- 
gether with whatever of experimentation and, of testing 



THE NEW EDUCATION AND THE OLD 269 

is involved in this effort. Practically every one of these 
conditions of increase in power for the adult is denied 
for the child. For him problems and aims are deter- 
mined by another mind. And upon the whole there 
is such an attempt to teach him a ready-made method 
for applying his material to the solution of his problems, 
or the reaching of his ends, that the factor of experi- 
mentation is reduced to a minimum. With the adult we 
unquestionably assume that an attitude of personal in- 
quiry, based upon the possession of a problem which 
interests and absorbs, is a necessary precondition of 
mental growth. With the child we assume that the 
precondition is rather the willing disposition which makes 
him ready to submit to any problem and material pre- 
sented from without. Alertness is our ideal in the one 
case; docility in the other." 9 

In other words, the very essence of the pragmatic 
psychology, which is taught us by actual living, is for- 
gotten in our educational work, and we assume that we 
are such masters of the child's psychology that we can 
play the part of omnipotence and practically replace life 
itself by artificial methods. We do this no doubt because 
docile and artificially formed human beings fit best into 
the lower levels of our present social system. 

Dewey says, on the contrary, that "since the ethical 
personality" of the child is not formed but forming, the 
function of the teacher is to provide "stimuli leading 
to the equipment of personality with active habits and 
interests." 10 The teacher, that is, must lead the child 
to life rather than mold him according to a preconceived 
plan. The last thing that the teacher, who comes into 
contact with living personalities, should do is to assume 
the attitude of the psychological analyst, as so often 
happens to-day. If he does this he "reduces persons to 
objects and thereby distorts, or rather destroys, the ethi- 
cal relationship which is the vital nerve of instruction." u 



270 THE LARGER ASPECTS OF SOCIALISM 

The teacher and the pupils are to be regarded as parts 
rather of a little democratic society than of a hierarchy 
composed of two grades, the teacher and the taught, and 
this little society is to be made like the larger society 
and life as a whole by occupying itself with activities as 
nearly like the activities of adults as may be — making 
allowances for the child's inferior development, but not 
for his status as pupil. The simplest industrial proc- 
esses, beginning with those of primitive man, are not 
only to be taught, as in the so-called system of industrial 
education, but are to furnish the very basis of instruc- 
tion, underlying even reading, writing, and arithmetic. 
With subjects of instruction like this, with the absence 
of any regimentation, even that inherent in the ordinary 
school task, with small classes and sufficient means, the 
teacher of the new education will be able to live up to 
Dewey's standard as he could scarcely hope to do under 
present conditions : 

"The teacher is, indeed, a person occupied with other 
persons. He lives in a social sphere, he is a member 
and organ of social life. His aims are social aims; 
the development of individuals taking ever more re- 
sponsible positions in a circle of social activities con- 
tinually increasing in radius and in complexity. What 
ever he as a teacher effectively does, he does as a person ; 
and he does with and toward persons. His methods, like 
his aims, when actively in operation, are practical, are 
social, are ethical, are anything you please save merely 
psychical. In comparison with this, the material and 
the data, the standpoint and the methods of psychology, 
are abstract. They transform specific acts and relations 
of individuals into a flow of processes in consciousness ; 
and these processes can be adequately identified and re- 
lated only through reference to a biological organism." 12 

Here is an attitude exactly the reverse of that which 
often grows out of the present non-social psychology, 



THE NEW EDUCATION AND THE OLD 27 1 

which is also non-evolutionary because it does not take 
social evolution into account. For according to this 
psychology the child is considered in large part as a 
young animal slowly developing one human attribute 
after another. With Dewey, on the contrary, he is a per- 
sonality and a member of society from the outset. It is 
not that present-day educators fail altogether to recog- 
nize the existence of personality from the beginning, but 
Dewey complains that their pedagogical philosophy 
makes them view this personality as a mysterious thing 
which there are no definite means of seizing: 

"Upon the whole, the best efforts of teachers at pres- 
ent are partly paralyzed, partly distorted, and partly ren- 
dered futile precisely from the fact that they are in 
such immediate contact with sheer, unanalyzed person- 
ality. The relation is such a purely ethical and personal 
one [i. e., not merely 'psychological'] that the teacher 
[educated to this psychological view] cannot get enough 
outside the situation to handle it intelligently and effec- 
tively." 13 

Only when the child's life is filled by activities in the 
school which call out his personality and give it full and 
free play will the teacher be able to see where each indi- 
vidual child stands and how he can be reached. It is not 
alone false theories on the teacher's part that make it 
impossible for him to obtain that intimate relation with 
the child that he needs in order to draw out its fullest 
powers, but also false relations created by the present 
system in the school. Dewey, then, has a two-fold criti- 
cism of the present education— even at its best, first as 
to its individualistic psychological theory, and, second, 
as to its attempt to make good the deficiency of this the- 
ory by a sheer effort to contrive a personal relationship 
without any adequate means of knowing the child or 
of sharing its life. 



2J2 THE LARGER ASPECTS OF SOCIALISM 

He says that educators commonly suppose that "by 
some influence of pure personality upon pure personality, 
conjoined with a knowledge of rules formulated by an 
educational theorist," an effective education can be con- 
trived. But he points out that this is nothing more than 
"an appeal to magic, plus dependence upon servile rou- 
tine." 14 This condition, Dewey believes, is partly due to 
the fact that the teacher accepts as valid certain peda- 
gogical generalizations which he has not drawn and 
could never draw from his actual experience as a teacher, 
that his position toward the great educational theories is 
that merely of a soldier waiting orders from a general — 
an inevitable condition until the establishment of social 
democracy secures for the teacher some independence 
from the business interests that now control the schools, 
or at least check their development through control of 
the purse strings and the higher institutions of learning. 
And certainly the art of education cannot be mastered 
like the military art. 

Having discussed Dewey's criticism of our present 
education, we can now appreciate his constructive pro- 
gram, for Dewey advocates, under the name of occupa- 
tional education, a total revolution in our school system. 
It is not education for occupation, but education through 
occupation that he has in view. And it is precisely in this 
difference of emphasis that the whole contrast between 
the present system and Socialist education lies. The So- 
cialist would educate every individual for the highest 
occupation of which he is capable, and make it possible 
for him to compete with others on equal terms for any 
position for which he chooses to strive; the capitalist 
would train every individual for a single occupation very 
early in life — unless the parents are well-to-do or the 
child extremely exceptional. Dewey favors industrial 
education; what usually goes by that name is industrial 



THE NEW EDUCATION AND THE OLD 273 

training. Education through industrial processes for the 
general participation in the industrial and economic life 
of the community, and education, during these same pri- 
mary or secondary years, for certain special and inferior 
industrial functions are opposed to one another at every 
point. 

Dewey insists on a basic principle in education, which 
is acknowledged by the overwhelming majority of edu- 
cators, namely, that the full and free growth of the child 
requires that he should not be specialized early: 

"He is engaged in forming habits rather than in defi- 
nitely utilizing those already formed. Consequently he 
is absorbed in getting that all-round contact with per- 
sons and things, that range of acquaintance with the 
physical and ideal factors of life, which shall afford the 
background and material for the specialized aims and 
pursuits of life. He is, or should be, busy in the forma- 
tion of a flexible variety of habits whose sole immediate 
criterion is their relation to full growth, rather than 
acquiring certain skills whose value is measured by their 
reference to specialized technical accomplishments." 15 

Instead of demanding an abbreviation and perversion 
even of such beginnings of a democratic educational sys- 
tem as we now have, Dewey stands for their extension 
and fulfillment. Instead of fitting the individual of the 
future for the lower ranks in industry and neglecting to 
train all his latent capacities for parenthood and citizen- 
ship, Dewey proposes to fit him to fill any function in so- 
ciety for which, at a later period of education, he may 
show the capacity, and to carry out his general duties as 
a citizen in the only concrete and practical way they can 
be carried out, namely, in relation to the general prob- 
lems of industry. 

Dewey conceives of the school as the only place where 
we can work freely for the formation of a higher human 



274 THE LARGER ASPECTS OF SOCIALISM 

type of a "social personality, with a certain attitude and 
equipment of working powers." For "in idea, at least, 
no other purpose restricts or compromises the dominance 
of the school purpose," and this is not the case "in busi- 
ness, politics and the professions." 16 He wishes us to 
take advantage of this superior freedom of the school, 
which we can do only if we refuse to allow the child 
to become a specialized worker in society until his edu- 
cation is complete. Industrial education as now preached 
goes in exactly the opposite direction, and, instead of 
working to change the world through the school, allows 
the one-sided development and worldliness of business, 
politics and the professions to pervert the normal devel- 
opment of the schools. 

Dewey explains his plan of education through occu- 
pations as follows : 

"The education of the human race, on the whole, has 
been gained through the occupations which it has pursued 
and developed. The vocations, the professions, the 
lines of activity which have been socially evolved, have 
furnished the social stimuli of knowledge and the centers 
about which it has been organized. If occupations were 
made fundamental in education, school work would con- 
form to the natural principles of social and mental de- 
velopment. The beginnings of this reform have already 
been introduced. Froebel got a glimpse of this con- 
ception in his scheme of education for infancy, though 
his policy was too romantic and symbolic to permit the 
idea to get adequate expression. Engineering and tech- 
nical schools, in which the sciences are pursued in refer- 
ence to their social uses, illustrate, at the upper end of 
the school ladder, another aspect of the same principle. 
The increasing emphasis upon gardening, horticulture, 
cooking, weaving, shop-work in wood and metal in the 
elementary and secondary schools is another symptom of 
the same movement. The ultimate value and (let us 



THE NEW EDUCATION AND THE OLD 275 

hope) destiny of the present movement toward industrial 
education will depend upon whether it becomes switched 
off into a method of class-education — in which case it 
would be better for it to perish immediately — or whether 
it recognizes the fundamental importance of training in 
typical and continuous lines of activity which are of 
social value for everybody." (My italics.) 17 

Dewey wishes to bring the school into closer relation to 
life, but to the life of humanity as a whole, to all the life 
of the future, not to the restricted present-day life of 
the masses whose children attend our public schools. He 
wants the school to lose "the special code of ethics and 
moral training which must characterize it as long as it 
is isolated [from the rest of life]." But far from stand- 
ing for any lower class schools, like the advocates of the 
so-called industrial education, he supports his proposed 
system on exactly the opposite ground. "Occupations 
bring people naturally together in groups, develop a 
group consciousness and power to divide and yet to 
cooperate harmoniously. Knowledge, scholastic attain- 
ments, aesthetic culture, pursued, as at present, with only 
personal ends in view, tend to egoism, social stratifica- 
tion and antagonisms." (My italics.) 18 

The school furnishes the environment to the child be- 
tween the home and the world at large, and partakes of 
the features of both to a varying degree. It is evident 
that the child cannot remain definitely in the home : 

"There comes a time when a richer, fuller and more 
carefully selected and arranged environment is required 
to afford the stimuli and conditions of the most educative 
activity, an environment more varied than that of the 
ordinary home, and yet one not so varied and disorderly, 
overpowering and overspecialized as that of social life 
in general. 

"Conscious education begins at this point. If it were 



2j6 THE LARGER ASPECTS OF SOCIALISM 

what it ought to be and what it may become, it would 
consist in the selection and arrangement of an environ- 
ment of material and tools, with models of the best 
artistic achievement of such a nature as to call out and 
exercise the child's life functions — to suggest to him, 
in other words, things worth doing and to keep him 
engaged in doing them. Teachers would be present 
fellow-workers and fellow-players-comrades in carrying 
on the scheme of play and work activities, and in build- 
ing up, along with the children, a miniature world as 
the obvious result and reward of their joint activities." 19 

What should be taught in the schools above all else, 
Dewey thinks, should be neither facts, nor ability to do 
this or that thing, but the scientific or experimental habit 
of mind, the ability to find out facts and to use them, 
the ability to apply the most valuable and practical truths 
to practical purposes : 

"Instructions carried on upon this basis would teach 
the mind that all ideas, truths, theories, etc., are of the 
nature of working hypotheses. One of the chief ob- 
stacles to the progress of the race has been the dogmatic 
habit of mind, the belief that some principles and ideas 
have such a value and authority that they are to be 
accepted without question and without revision. The 
experimental habit of mind, that which regards ideas 
and principles as tentative methods of solving problems 
and organizing data, is very recent. An education based 
upon the pragmatic conception would inevitably turn 
out persons who were alive to the necessity of continually 
testing their ideas and beliefs by putting them into 
practical application, and of revising their beliefs on 
the basis of the results of such application." 26 

The child is to be stimulated from the first to demand 
more activities and new activities. Life itself is to fur- 
nish him its opportunities and incidentally its discipline. 



THE NEW EDUCATION AND THE OLD 277 

But life, if truly presented, will not tie him to any hard 
and fast "facts" or "laws." 

"It is true, is it not," asks Dewey, "that the universe 
is really a wonderful place, and that history is a record 
of all the absorbing struggles, failures and successes 
of human aspiration and endeavor? If this be true, 
are we doing quite the fair thing by either world of 
nature or of history, or the child, the newcomer into 
this wonderful world, when we manage to present all 
this to him as if it constituted just so many lessons 
which for no very obvious and vital reason have to be 
learned ?" 21 

Whether the child is coerced by punishment or per-* 
suaded by rewards to swallow down intellectualized "les- 
sons," the chief burden of which is to tell him what he 
cannot do, the result is equally nefarious. Everyone is 
familiar, for instance, with the school girl who is abso- 
lutely under the dominion of the teacher through the 
persuasive means the latter has used, praise, kindness, 
etc. What is needed is not any such reward or punish- 
ment, but companionship and the stimulation of the child 
to independent efforts for their own sake. "In case either 
rewards, of however subtle a kind, or punishment, how- 
ever humane, are used," says Dewey, "the children are 
getting set in external habits or moralities, and are learn- 
ing to find their center of intellectual gravity outside 
their own selves." And it is only a system of education 
that satisfies, to the full, all the need of activity and pos- 
sibility of self-expression there is in the child that will 
succeed in making such external devices unnecessary. 
By mere lessons and drill of any kind, even writing, 
reading and arithmetic, before the desire to read or to 
write or to calculate has been developed, children are 
necessarily bored, not at all because of any deficiency 



278 THE LARGER ASPECTS OF SOCIALISM 

in themselves, but because there are other bodily or 
mental activities which their natures crave. 

"The only final educative force in the world," says 
Dewey, "is participation in the realities of life." In the 
pragmatic educational philosophy it is not the teacher 
that acts, but the child. The child acts, and nature re- 
acts; experience, sympathy and friendship are found 
to be the best teachers, and the schoolmaster is rather 
arranging a many-sided environment for the child to 
choose from than acting on him directly. Not only com- 
mands, but even precepts are out of place, and the only 
rules that are permissible are those which the child him- 
self, in his better moments, can see are necessary, rules 
which grow directly out of the particular situation and 
not out of generalities. The child's experience from the 
first must be with life itself, that is, with productive and 
social activities; and from the first these activities must 
be to some degree similar to those of adults — and more 
and more so as the child develops, since this is the type 
of all real experience. This experience is from the first 
social, since no kind of manual training in actual indus- 
trial processes can take place without a certain amount 
of cooperation, division of labor, and real social life. 
The child falls into definite and complex and natural re- 
lations with other children, as well as with the teacher, 
from the very beginning of his school life. And without 
this social division of labor there develops emulation and 
rivalry, just because all are doing the same work — and 
competition is considered undesirable and unnecessary 
both by Dewey and other social thinkers. 

And finally it is only the social occupations that 
actually teach the child to do something which he feels 
to be of immediate value instead of preparing him for 
a remote future, an objection which lies even against 
that kindergarten work which is made pleasant by some 



THE NEW EDUCATION AND THE OLD 279 

artificial scheme rather than by the inherent quality 
of the activity itself. Dewey regards social occupa- 
tions as being not only play to the children but also 
work in the truest sense of the word. The kindergarten 
education of the past, he contends, has been too largely 
mere play, while the activity of the higher grades has 
been work in the sense of toil rather than work in its 
broader meaning, and has had practically no element of 
play at all. 

Dewey believes in the value of work as well as 
play and insists that work rightly selected and taught 
is actually play to the child : 

"To the child the homely activities going on about him 
are not utilitarian devices for accomplishing physical 
ends; they exemplify a wonderful world, the depths of 
which he has not sounded, a world full of the mystery 
and promise that attend all the doings of the grown-ups 
whom he admires." 25 

Dewey reaches the important conclusion not only 
that play and work must be combined but that all those 
educational methods, however interesting to the child, 
which appeal to its fancy rather than to anything that 
is actually connected with its life, are not only wasteful 
but actually dangerous — that is, capable of filling its 
mind with false tastes and values. The imagination, 
in a word, should be healthy and realistic — which would 
certainly eliminate ninety-nine per cent of the so-called 
literature of childhood, especially the folk-lore. 

Indeed it is worth while to interject a further con- 
sideration of this point. Not only is children's litera- 
ture unadapted to children, but the literature of youth 
is, for the same reason, unadapted to youth, and simi- 
larly the classical literature with which we supply our 
young men and women in the universities is, for the 



28o THE LARGER ASPECTS OF SOCIALISM 

same reason, in very large measure fanciful, remote 
and dangerous. One of the prime objects of educa- 
tion should undoubtedly be to restrict the reading of 
the student to what is nearest to him until his educa- 
tion is complete — without any coercion, of course. The 
child, the youth, and the young man should have his 
life so filled with fruitful and interesting activity that 
a very small amount of literature would be required. 
This literature should above all be ultra-modern — which 
is by no means as much as to say that the average 
modern book is superior to the average book of some 
previous periods. If the system of education is to 
be revolutionized then the first step should be to see 
that new education is not completely counteracted at 
every point by the overwhelming influence of antiquated 
and reactionary literature. Of course some works of 
extraordinary power and brilliance may be accepted in 
spite of their tremendous danger — which is increased 
in proportion to the genius of the writer — but even 
such works should be introduced into education only 
at a late stage and with the most careful preparation. 
Shakespeare, for instance, might be retained, but should 
be used only in the last years of the university with elabo- 
rate preparation and infinite care. 

Dewey as well as Montessori at the same time rejects 
the new fad of underestimating the importance of 
language — that is for the children of the masses : 

"Taken literally, the maxim, 'Teach things, not 
words,' or 'Teach things before words,' would be the 
negation of education; it would reduce mental life to 
mere physical and sensible adjustments. Learning, in 
the proper sense, is not learning things, but the meaning 
of things, and this process involves the use of signs, or 
language in its generic sense. In like fashion, the war- 
fare of some educational reformers against symbols (in- 



THE NEW EDUCATION AND THE OLD 281 

eluding words) is pushed to extremes, involves the de- 
struction of the intellectual life, since this lives, moves 
and has its being in those processes of definition, ab- 
straction, generalization and classification that are made 
possible by symbols alone. Nevertheless, these conten- 
tions of educational reformers have been needed. The 
liability of a thing to abuse is in proportion to the value 
of its right use." 26 

The real point in Dewey's mind is that language is 
not a danger in itself, but that words separated from 
things are a danger: 

"Moreover, there is a tendency to assume that when- 
ever there is a definite word or form of speech there 
is also a definite idea; while, as a matter of fact, adults 
and children alike are capable of using even precise 
verbal formulae with only the vaguest and most confused 
sense of what they mean. Genuine ignorance is more 
profitable because likely to be accompanied by humility, 
curiosity and open-mindedness, while ability to repeat 
catch-phrases, cant terms, familiar propositions gives 
the conceit of learning and coats the mind with a varnish 
waterproof to new ideas." 27 

While, therefore, Dewey attaches the greatest im- 
portance to the study of words in coordination with 
the study of things, no one is more fundamentally op- 
posed to linguistic studies by themselves : 

"The use of linguistic studies and methods to halt the 
human mind on the level of the attainments of the past, 
to prevent new inquiry and discovery, to put the au- 
thority of tradition in place of the authority of natural 
facts and laws, to reduce the individual to a parasite 
living on the second-hand experience of others — these 
things have been the source of the reformers' protest 
against the pre-eminence assigned to language in 
schools." 28 



282 THE LARGER ASPECTS OF SOCIALISM 

In order to distinguish more sharply between the 
education by industrial occupations proposed by Dewey 
and the industrial education that really amounts to no 
more than vocational training, let us take up briefly 
some of the propositions of Professor Frederick G. 
Bonsor of the Teachers College of Columbia University. 
For the specialists in education and pedagogy are stand- 
ing more and more with Dewey. Professor Bonsor's 
theses are all stated in a way to show what genuine in- 
dustrial education is not, as well as what it is : 

"1. For the elementary school, industrial arts should 
be tested by the same standards that are applied to 
other school subjects : 

"(a) A body of thought and experience of funda- 
mental and universal usefulness. 

"(b) Susceptibility of treatment appealing to inter- 
ests and capacities of children, and practical possibilities 
of school children." 

The first proposition (a) throws out as unsuitable 
for real education in the primary school any subject or 
method that specializes the child for one kind of use- 
fulness, in other words it eliminates vocational training. 
The education must be of universal usefulness, though 
it may be specialized and adapted to the individu- 
ality. 

It is obvious that all real education must appeal to 
the interest and capacity of the child, which again elimi- 
nates vocational training. This statement that it must 
also be adapted to practical possibilities of school in- 
struction reminds us of one of the deepest sources of 
opposition to real industrial education as against mere 
vocational training, namely, that to adapt school build- 
ings and equipment for the larger purpose would neces- 
sarily be manyfold more expensive than for the smaller. 



THE NEW EDUCATION AND THE OLD 283 

"Large units of industrial subject matter and specific 
projects should be selected which most typically illustrate 
industrial methods and industrial life." 

Vocational training must select specialized tasks like 
operating the sewing-machine. Industrial education 
keeps always in view the complex whole of our in- 
dustrial life. It wishes to illustrate the industrial sys- 
tem, and to prepare the student not to become a par- 
ticular cog, but to find his place in the whole, and even 
this purpose is secondary, for the first object is to use 
industry to develop the child, and so later to develop 
industry. Vocational training in primary grades, by 
adapting the child to industry as it is, does little for 
either purpose. 

"The projects in hand work should serve as points 
of departure for opening up the study of the industries 
in all of their larger relationships, social as well as 
material and technical/ ' 

By this method we have a natural and sound approach 
to all economic, and political and social questions, which, 
in their broader aspects, may be taught successfully at 
a much earlier period than that at which unsuccessful 
attempts are made to teach them to-day. 

"Industrial arts should function in the child's life even 
more specifically in the direction of cultivating his in- 
telligence as a consumer, home maker, and citizen than 
as a producer." 

Dewey gives more attention to the child as a pros- 
pective producer than as a prospective consumer. It 
is more difficult, however, to relate the child to industry 
than to relate him to the home as the center of con- 
sumption, and as the home side is equally important 
it should be developed first in point of time. The needs 



284 THE LARGER ASPECTS OF SOCIALISM 

of individuals as consumers are much more uniform 
than their work as producers. The home may be a 
small model society in so far as it represents true co- 
operation in consumption; and the nation is well viewed 
as only a larger home in this sense of the word. But 
it must always be remembered that the larger society, 
because of the greater possibility of division of labor 
and the better chance it gives to every individual to 
find a function more nearly adapted to his nature, is 
a superior educator in every way. The education and 
organization of adult consumers on a society instead 
of a mere home basis is perhaps an even greater problem 
than the education and organization of producers. But 
cooking and sewing and other home work are only be- 
ginnings of the larger domestic art, science and economy 
that go beyond the home. The great department store, 
for example, may be viewed as being essentially the 
provider for homes and so furnishes a vast field for 
study. It becomes, as it were, the material basis and 
matrix for every conceivable home. Then the home 
must be especially adapted to another great outside 
institution, the school. The child should be taught that 
the home exists chiefly for him and should be interested 
in homes of the past and foreign homes of the present. 
And finally children should be taught a great deal about 
schools. They should not only be interested in schools 
of other countries and of the past, in relation to the 
homes and industries of the place and period, but they 
should teach one another, and occasionally younger 
children also — and opportunities for this, which are 
lacking now, are plentiful in occupational education. 

'The study of industrial arts should develop primarily 
industrial intelligence, insight and appreciation, subor- 
dinating skill in manipulation to thought content." 



THE NEW EDUCATION AND THE OLD 285 

This proposition cautions against the excesses of those 
who consider the child a little animal, and emphasize 
either muscular or sense training. The muscles or 
senses are not to be trained in themselves, but only as 
means to stimulate the intelligence. A high degree 
of skill means muscular or sense specialisation, which is 
to be avoided. 

"Industrial arts as a subject should incorporate all 
of the values of manual training, domestic art, domestic 
science and drawing appropriate to the elementary school 
and should add a rich body of thought giving them social 
meaning and real value." 

Even the broader industrial subjects and methods 
already found in many schools (and not by any means 
to be classified as vocational) do not, when added to- 
gether mechanically, make industrial education. They 
must be related organically — and not only with one an- 
other, but with all other subjects of the curriculum: 

"Industrial arts together with other subjects of the 
curriculum should provide adequate motivation for all 
of the fine arts work which can function in the child's 
life." 

The industrial arts, etc., must in the same way pro- 
vide the motives for all the scientific work as well as 
the fine arts work in the child's life : 

"Industrial arts should provide a means for more in- 
telligence in the selection of a vocation than is now 
provided by all other means taken together." 

It is obvious, as I have pointed out, that mere voca- 
tional training has the opposite effect. Instead of fitting 
for the broadest possible selection of a vocation, it 
nails the child down to a single vocation or at most to 
a strictly limited group of vocations. To train for 



286 THE LARGER ASPECTS OF SOCIALISM 

selection of a vocation means to keep as far as possi- 
ble from vocational training. 

The last stage of school education — that which cor- 
responds to the universities and colleges — is that in 
which Dewey's principle that the child must be taught 
that he is to shape society as well as to adapt himself 
to it, has the widest application. Indeed it was largely 
by the application of this principle that Professor Boris 
Sidis succeeded in making his son proficient in many of 
the courses at Harvard University, usually studied by 
youth of from eighteen to twenty-two, when he was little 
more than half this age. 

The keynote to Sidis' system is undoubtedly his suc- 
cessful effort to give the child a sympathetic under- 
standing of the adult life of the times and even to 
inculcate an enthusiastic interest in it — an attitude very 
similar to that of Montaigne, except of course that 
Sidis has the vast advantage of modern culture and 
the methods of teaching it has involved. But more 
important by far is the economic aspect of Sidis' sys- 
tem. He has practically been a tutor to his boy, and 
not only a tutor but a very expensive one. The case is 
similar to that of John Stuart Mill, and shows what 
may be accomplished with sufficient expenditure of time, 
energy, and intelligence. If Sidis' suggestions have not 
been more widely followed and are not likely to be 
generally adopted in the near future this is due far 
more to their cost than to any inherent difficulty. If 
every child could have even a fraction of the attention 
given to the Sidis child, there is little doubt that the 
progress in education at this later stage would be just 
as surprising and revolutionary as that accomplished by 
Montessori from three to six. It is true that there seems 
to be a break between Sidis' methods, which are pre- 
dominantly intellectual, and those of Dewey, but Dewey 



THE NEW EDUCATION AND THE OLD 287 

clearly and repeatedly asserts that the intellectual ele- 
ment becomes more and more important relatively with 
the development of the child. And on the other hand 
it cannot be doubted that even in the final stage of 
general education — preceding the specialization of 
technical schools — a large part of the curriculum must 
still be reserved to subjects corresponding to Dewey's 
social occupations, though at a higher stage of develop- 
ment. Many aspects of domestic science and housekeep- 
ing, for example, become especially interesting and valu- 
able about this time — if we remember that we might 
expect, with the application of the new system, that 
children would reach this educational stage by the age of 
fourteen or earlier instead of eighteen as at the present 
time. But a vast amount of experiment is needed, 
though not necessarily a very long time, before the 
kindergarten and primary school methods, such as the 
social occupations, can be elaborated to the point that 
they also serve the later stages of education. And in 
the meanwhile Sidis' intellectual system is undoubtedly 
sound as far as it goes, with the proviso that enough 
time must be left to be filled in with practical or occu- 
pational activities as fast as they are sufficiently de- 
veloped. 

Sidis assumes toward the intellect of the child the 
same attitude taken by Dewey and Montessori toward 
all its activities. He assumes that the child's brain 
becomes very active at a relatively early age, and that 
we really have no choice in the question as to whether 
we will allow it to develop or not. There is a general 
fear that the child's brain may be strained. On the 
contrary, as Sidis points out, if you do not direct his 
mental energies in the right direction the child will 
waste them in the wrong direction, and he refers as 
illustrations to foolish games, fantastic and false fie- 



288 THE LARGER ASPECTS OF SOCIALISM 

tion, etc., that are now so general. In cultivating the 
child's intellect, then, at a very early age, and to its 
full capacity, Sidis by no means intends to fill the 
child's mind with information^ useful or useless, nor 
to settle him into fixed habits of thought or fixed 
habits of life of any kind. On the contrary, his pur- 
pose is to preserve the child's freedom and to protect 
him as far as possible against the formation of habits — 
which he believes can only be accomplished by strength- 
ening his intelligence in all directions. 

Sidis says : "Do not let the best of habits harden 
beyond the point of further modification. . . . 
Fixed adaptations tend to inhibit the output of reserve 
energy. . . . Cultivate variability. . . . The 
important principle in education is not so much the 
formation of habits as the power of their reforma- 
tion." 28 What Sidis pleads for as basic is "a cultiva- 
tion of the principle of habit disintegration" — that is 
to say, he wishes not only to protect the child from 
directing his energies in the wrong direction, or from 
wasting them, but also from all habits, so that they 
may not become ingrained before the child's natural 
character and individuality have been matured. 

But the power of breaking down habits depends upon 
the strength of "the aqua fortis of the intellect," since 
it is only the logical and critical activities that prevent 
the subconscious elements of the personality from pre- 
dominating over the conscious. Sidis wishes to protect 
the child from becoming the slave of sub-conscious im- 
pressions and still more of sub-conscious habits, as 
Freud shows to have been the case in so many instances 
of nervous and mental weakness or breakdown. It is 
not to be supposed that Sidis would go so far as to 
hope or to desire that the sub-conscious life should be 
crushed altogether or reduced to a minimum. Doubt- 



THE NEW EDUCATION AND THE OLD 289 

less he recognizes, with most of the psychologists of 
our time, the indispensable and important role played 
by the sub-conscious, but he wishes the conscious to 
dominate and he wants the developed personality, shaped 
largely by conscious effort, to be the vehicle of those 
sub-conscious forces that remain. Not only will these 
sub-conscious forces be counterbalanced when deleteri- 
ous, but the character of all of them will undoubtedly 
be fundamentally altered, by conscious life and thought. 
For it is entirely against every principle of scientific 
psychology to suppose that there is any hard and fast 
line between the conscious and the sub-conscious, any 
more than there is between will, thought, and feeling. 

While Sidis regards the child as having a very strong 
inherent tendency toward mental development in one 
direction or another at a very early age, he views 
present-day society as tempting it along innumerable false 
and evil paths. All the backwardness of society in what- 
ever direction becomes especially dangerous when forced 
upon the attention of the impressionable child. "We 
must guard the child against all evil fears, superstitions, 
prejudices and credulity" and "form an anti-toxin for 
the neutralization of the virulent toxins produced by 
mental microbes." 29 That is, only as we develop the 
child's mental capacities to their maximum can we be 
sure that it is not being perverted and poisoned by the 
innumerable false and evil ideas and suggestions that sur- 
round it. Against all the outer authority of such ideas, 
which necessarily hypnotize the immature mind, against 
all the mystic and misty beatific visions which are offered 
to the child by various forms of literature as soon as it is 
able to read and get at literature, the only remedy is an 
all-round strengthening of the intellect on every subject 
that can by any means be brought into the child's range 
of comprehension. 



29O THE LARGER ASPECTS OF SOCIALISM 

Here again we see the revolutionary character of 
Sidis' education. Far from wanting to preserve the 
innocence of ignorance, Sidis wishes to destroy it at 
the earliest possible moment. Not only is the child 
to be taught everything it can learn and understand, 
but it is to be taught to recognize and to fight against 
evil: 

"The recognition of evil under all its guises is at 
the basis of the true education of man. 

"Open the eyes of your children so that they 
shall see, understand and face courageously the evils of 
life. 

"Encourage the scrutinizing of whatever interests the 
child — e. g. fallacies, sophisms, ugliness, deformity, 
prejudice, superstition, vice, depravity." 30 

In other words, Sidis would encourage the child to 
be interested in those very things from which, since the 
dawn of civilization, it has been more or less "protected." 
He carries the essential principle of all modern edu- 
cational theories to their logical conclusion. Not only 
must the teacher see to it that whatever the child is 
taught should interest the child, but he must see to it 
that whatever interests the child should be taught. 

Here is a principle which has either been denied or 
only half recognized, not because it lay out of the road 
of modern educational thought, but merely because it 
would obviously make it necessary to increase manyfold 
the energies and money expended on the education of 
children. As a rule the great educational innovators 
and radicals even before Rousseau (Montaigne, 
Rabelais and others) have been accepted merely as 
idealists, and if their principles have not been applied 
the excuse has always been, at the bottom, that they 



THE NEW EDUCATION AND THE OLD 2CjI 

were too expensive. But another still more serious 
evil must inevitably result sooner or later from this 
false economy (the inevitable result of a class society), 
namely that educational ideals and thinking will them- 
selves be cut down or relegated to ^he dust-heap, even 
as ideals, by the obvious fact that they are not going 
to be applied under existing forms of society. This 
is undoubtedly the reason, for example, that we have 
not seen that the accepted principle that education should 
interest the child involves also the principle that what- 
ever interests the child should be recognized in its 
education. 

If we bear Sidis' principles in mind and his brilliantly 
successful application of these principles to the ordi- 
nary curriculum, we can imagine what results they 
might produce with a child who had spent three or 
four years under Montessori and six or eight under 
Dewey. Sidis had no such preparation for his boy. 
Moreover, he was limited by his situation as individual 
tutor; he could not introduce elaborate new machinery 
nor secure the benefit of the influence of one child on 
another, and it was for this reason that he could in- 
troduce comparatively few new subjects, unless in an 
incidental way. But children so prepared in their earlier 
years and then taught by Sidis' method might well be 
introduced to a whole new series of subjects. From 
a general knowledge of industrial processes, they could 
pass, for example, to a series of biographies of inventors 
and industrial organizers, to economic history, including 
class wars and wars between nations. Beginning with 
earlier and simpler economic communities they could 
be brought within a year or two as far as the time when 
the age of railroads began to introduce the complexities 
of modern civilization. They could then take up the 
biography of leaders and types of the various social 



292 THE LARGER ASPECTS OF SOCIALISM 

classes of the past. And before the secondary years 
were over a basis would thus be laid in which even the 
ideas and ideals of the past as embodied in literatures, 
religions, and philosophies might be explained in rela- 
tion to the social systems, the cultures, and the civiliza- 
tions that produced them. Contemporaneous civiliza- 
tions and lower cultures could be treated in the same 
way, on the basis of the physiography and industrial 
geography that had already been taught in the primary 
grades. The human interest in all this could only come 
with a free treatment of every topic and by giving 
the same weight to the evils that hold man back as to 
the progressive tendencies that carry him forward. 
Indeed unless this method is followed and the critical 
faculties developed, not only does the interest flag, but 
the child gets a completely false impression. Even the 
most inspired poem, if it belongs to a former period, how- 
ever recent that period may be, bears the marks of the 
time, and with its inspiration may often carry into the 
child's sub-consciousness the germs of retrogressive and 
dangerous suggestion. 

It is also necessary at this period of education to 
allow the freest treatment of every topic when it natur- 
ally impinges on any sex question. Fatal and unreal 
as it would be to overemphasize sex by giving it any 
separate treatment, it is far more fatal to try to sup- 
press its discussion in the right connections. The sexual 
element in biology would have been grasped in the 
earlier nature studies and to some degree in the practical 
study of physiology of the intermediate period, a study 
which could only be brought to completion, however, 
in the third period. But the relations between the 
sexes would also be repeatedly touched upon in any 
honest and free treatment of history and literature. 
The only phases that should be excepted are those that 



THE NEW EDUCATION AND THE OLD 20,3 

are less important and out of the way, however im- 
portant these may later appear to be to the special 
student of the subject. For such matters as sexual 
customs which are so outgrown that we call them per- 
verted, or individual manifestations that we class in 
the same way, are only to be understood by the fully 
matured. And for the same reason the highly wrought 
idealizations of sexual love often found in literature 
may be avoided. But to attempt to repress all reference 
to sex matters is not only to misrepresent life generally, 
to leave young people unprotected against mistaken im- 
pressions, and to drive them to strange courses; it is 
also to deprive education of the keenest impulse that 
urges human beings to learning and all activity, es- 
pecially at this age. That is why G. Stanley Hall wants 
to make sex the very foundation of the adolescent's 
education : 

"If sex is fundamental and all-conditioning for human 
well-being, as nearly all eminent experts now claim, it 
follows that it must be made correspondingly central 
in education in a way to unite its chief topics into an 
organic whole that fits the successive stages of human 
development so as to utilize the intense and unique in- 
terest that now goes to waste/' 31 

After dealing with sex in botany and biology and 
physiology from the age of eight or ten, the history of 
woman, the family, marriage and the home, says Hall, 
should be suitably dealt with; and finally, in college, 
should come a treatment of the hygiene of wedlock, and 
''something rather specific concerning the virtues of 
fatherhood and motherhood before and after child- 
birth." In college should also be studied prostitution, 
divorce and the psychology of sex and love, together 
with its history and meaning. The relation between 



294 THE LARGER ASPECTS OF SOCIALISM 

sex and religion, and sex and the imagination and feel- 
ings would be thoroughly discussed. There should be 
"some hint" of sex "in its grosser forms" and "some- 
thing should be taught concerning the forms of tempta- 
tion and the modes of resisting it" : 

"Sex is a great quickener of mind, intelligence and 
especially of the imagination and the higher sentiments. 
If there is excess or defect, it is self-respect, will, mind- 
power that will suffer. The individual becomes solitary 
rather than social. . . . Thus the sex organs have 
two functions; the first is reproduction and the other 
is to give force and energy to all other parts and to the 
character generally. . . . 

"It has not entered into the heart of man to conceive 
the amount of genuine scientific knowledge that a deep 
interest in sex could carry and vitalize. No other ap- 
perception organ has such power to learn and assimilate. 
The acquisition of knowledge which this zest could 
effect — and that naturally and without fatigue — is prob- 
ably quite incredible. Thus the plea for such a new 
curriculum might rest its claims solely upon mental 
economy, and find here a new noetic faculty not yet 
brought into action in the educational field." 32 

In a word, we must see to the normal development 
and education of the sex impulse as well as its restraint. 
If powerful counter-forces are needed when this new 
life force has first begun to grow, they may easily be 
found — and in many different directions, a number of 
which are mentioned in this and the following chapters. 
But such counter-forces need not be destructive of the 
forces of life. Assume, for example, that we should de- 
cide to teach all young people, as prospective parents, the 
first steps, at least in handling and teaching little children. 
Nothing could bring the children of the future into 
young people's consciousness like this, nothing could so 






THE NEW EDUCATION AND THE OLD 295 

counteract the tendency to the partial expression of sex, 
and nothing is so valuable for general educational pur- 
poses. Indeed a normal school education for everybody 
is indispensable in view of the great social transforma- 
tion that is impending. Parents will soon have more op- 
portunity to develop their children, and more will be ex- 
pected of them by the schools and by society. Of course 
it will be a new and revolutionized normal education, for 
it will be based on the principle that only those who have 
the vision to foresee something of future social develop- 
ments can hope to teach the teachers and parents of the 
future generation. 



XII 

SOCIALISM AND THE NEW EDUCATION 

The public school question is at bottom economic. 
Even in Prussia, the classic land of universal and com- 
pulsory instruction, the development of the public 
schools is being stunted in every direction for lack of 
funds, and it is common in some parts of the country 
to have only one teacher to more than a hundred 
pupils. Bebel reminds us that even in the army not 
more than eight or ten men are given to a corporal to 
train and suggests that under Socialism a teacher will 
be provided for every eight or ten pupils, while Ex-Presi- 
dent Eliot of Harvard proposes the ratio of one to ten 
or fifteen. To carry out this reform, even in America, 
would require the expenditure of two or three times the 
sums now given to the public schools. The increased 
need of material appliances would amount to nearly as 
much, while the maintenance of school children during 
the whole educational period by the state, as demanded 
by the German Party, would require an even greater 
sum. The estimate that Socialist standards of education 
would mean a fivefold increase in present educational ex- 
penditures is a moderate one. In the meanwhile it would 
require a revolution to bring about the doubling of the 
sum expended on education, except for that vocational 
training demanded by employers. 

Educational reform will undoubtedly make con- 
siderable progress during the period of State Capitalism 

296 



SOCIALISM AND THE NEW EDUCATION 297 

or "State Socialism" that lies between us and Socialism. 
Along certain specified lines the sum spent on educa- 
tion may even be increased several fold. Dr. Eliot, for 
example, demands an increase of from four to six fold. 
The "progress" made, however, will probably not be in 
the direction even of the educational ideals of social de- 
mocracy, but will rather be as reactionary in one direc- 
tion as it is progressive in another. 

The ruling classes will never pay to educate the chil- 
dren of the masses to develop all that is in them or to fit 
them to fill those of the higher positions in society for 
which they show the requisite capacity — that is, they will 
never voluntarily pay to give the children of the masses 
an equal educational opportunity and an equal chance to 
compete with their own children. They will oppose the 
maintenance by the state of any more than a very small 
proportion of school children, enough to fill those higher 
positions in industry and government that are left over 
after their own children have been provided for. 

In the opinion of Socialists, a number of teachers 
corresponding to those in use in model private institu- 
tions will never be provided for the public schools with 
the consent of the ruling classes unless there is an im- 
mediate menace of social revolution, and finally that 
material equipment only will be furnished which is for 
physical education and industrial training in the narrow- 
est sense. On the other hand, besides admitting more 
selected children of the people than at present to the 
opportunities of upper class children, our progressive 
capitalists will undoubtedly make some large improve- 
ments in popular education. Everything will be done to 
give the children of the people the maximum of physical 
and industrial efficiency in those occupations consigned to 
them by the ruling classes. 

These, in a word, are the rigid limitations which 



298 THE LARGER ASPECTS OF SOCIALISM 

every educational reformer confronts. This is why all 
the great educators from Montaigne and Rousseau to 
Spencer and Tolstoy are now regarded as mere idealists, 
and why the educational thought of Our time, making 
a virtue of a necessity, is beginning to idealize exclu- 
sively those lines of educational advance that lie im- 
mediately before us and will be permitted and required 
by a paternalistic capitalist state. 

This educational ideal of State Capitalism is very well 
characterized by Stirner: 

"The independent existence of the state demands my 
dependence. Its growth according to nature, its organ- 
ism, demands that my nature should not grow freely 
but should be cut to suit it. In order that it may 
be able to unfold itself naturally it lays upon me the 
shears of culture. It gives me a bringing up and an 
education suited to it not to me. . . . This is the 
kind of education and culture which the state is able 
to give me. It trains me up to 'a useful tool,' 'a useful 
member of society.' " 1 

Stirner recognizes that the State Capitalist society 
does not represent the welfare of all individuals, be- 
cause it is the product of a class and of the submission 
of the masses to that class. 

Tolstoy reaches the same conclusion as Stirner, that 
our education is a class education throughout. He says 
that the ruling class have perverted education in adapt- 
ing it to the narrow class standpoint, either by making it 
religious in a sectarian sense, or by using the schools 
for governmental purposes, and shaping them, in so far 
as higher education is open to the masses, to furnish suit- 
able "helpers, abettors and accomplices" of the ruling 
class ("Education and Culture"). 



SOCIALISM AND THE NEW EDUCATION 299 

But the narrowest limitation is that the schools are 
necessarily constructed for the convenience of over- 
worked and underpaid teachers, and here Tolstoy 
recognizes a truth which is overlooked by most of the 
educational idealists from Rousseau to Montessori, that 
the children's questions and conversation, and even their 
noise are valuable and are only to be limited by the 
strict necessities of the schoolroom — which may mean 
very little restriction at all where there are enough 
teachers of the right kind : 

"School is established, not in order that it should be 
convenient for the children to study, but that the teachers 
should be able to teach in comfort. The children's con- 
versation, motion and merriment, which are their neces- 
sary conditions of study, are not convenient for the 
teacher, and so in the schools which are built on the 
plan of prisons, questions, conversation and motion are 
prohibited." 2 

Tolstoy points out that our schools, instead of an- 
swering the questions put by life, and instead of calling 
forth these questions, answer an entirely different set 
which have been put by humanity several centuries back, 
such as geographical and historical problems which are 
entirely remote from the child's life and have no more 
than a secondary interest for adults. 

Even the streets as they are to-day teach more than 
the school : 

"It is enough to look at one and the same child at 
home, in the street, or at school ; now you see a vivacious, 
curious child with a smile in his eyes and on his lips 
seeking instruction in everything as he would seek pleas- 
ure, clearly and frequently strongly expressing his 
thoughts in his own word's; now again you see a worn- 
out, retiring being, with an expression of fatigue, terror 



300 THE LARGER ASPECTS OF SOCIALISM 

and ennui, repeating with the lips only strange words 
in a strange language — a being whose soul has, like a 
snail, retreated into its house. It is enough to look at 
these two conditions in order to decide which of the 
two is more advantageous for the child's development. 

"That strange psychological condition which I will 
call the scholastic condition of the soul, and which all 
of us unfortunately know too well, consists in that 
all the higher faculties, imagination, creativeness, in- 
ventiveness, give way to other semi-animal faculties 
which consist in pronouncing sounds independently from 
any concept, in counting numbers in succession, I, 2, 3, 
4, 5, in perceiving words without allowing imagination 
to substitute images for these sounds, in short in de- 
veloping a faculty for crushing all higher faculties so 
that only those might be evolved which coincide with 
the scholastic condition of fear and of straining memory 
and attention. 

"Every pupil is so long an anomaly at school as he has 
not fallen into the rut of this semi-animal condition. 
The moment the child has reached that state and has 
lost all his independence and originality, the moment 
there appear in him various symptoms of disease — 
hypocrisy, aimless lying, dullness, and so forth — he no 
longer is an anomaly; he has fallen into the rut, and 
the teacher begins to be satisfied with him. Then there 
happen those by no means accidental and frequently re- 
peated phenomena that the dullest boy becomes the best 
pupil, and the most intelligent the worst." 3 

While traveling in London, Paris, Marseilles and else- 
where Tolstoy noted that what the people were really 
learning in the life of the streets, though entirely con- 
trary to what they had learned in school and unrelated 
to it, was making bright men and women. He felt, 
therefore, that the school education of the masses is 
farther behind their general culture to-day than it ever 
was in history and is falling more and more behind all 



SOCIALISM AND THE NEW EDUCATION 3OI 

the time: "The more a nation has progressed in general 
education the more that education has passed away from 
school life, making the contents of the school meaning- 
less." The invention of the art of printing alone, he re- 
marks, has made the amount of education that the school 
could afford in comparison with life almost insignificant. 
Tolstoy wishes, then, that we may learn from the actual 
life of the masses to introduce into the schoolroom the 
same method by which they learn after leaving school. 
He does not seem to realize, however, that neither this 
nor any of his other principles will be carried out by any 
chance until the masses themselves control the schools. 

Tolstoy combats especially the dogmatism that neces- 
sarily governs every school system as long as sufficient 
means are not at hand to carry on those educational 
experiments needed to adapt the schools to what the 
more interested parents and teachers require. Every 
bureaucratic and "State Socialist" system is necessarily 
permeated by dogma. For it is only by dogmas that 
teachers can be driven to the unnatural and strained ef- 
forts demanded by large classes, that the people can be 
partly blinded as to what is being done, or the system 
itself defended even among its own supporters. While 
Tolstoy himself does not seem to see clearly the source 
of these dogmas, no one has criticized them better; for 
he points out just why the pseudo-science in the name of 
which our educational systems are fixed is an entirely in- 
sufficient basis on which to shape the future generation : 

"All the pedagogues of this school, especially the Ger- 
mans, the founders of the school, start with the false 
idea that those philosophical questions which have re- 
mained as questions for all the philosophers from Plato 
to Kant have been definitely settled by them. They are 
settled so definitely that the process of the acquisition 
by man of impressions, sensations, concepts, ratiocina- 



302 THE LARGER ASPECTS OF SOCIALISM 

tions, has been analyzed by them down to its minutest 
details, and the component parts of what we call the 
soul or the essence of man have been dissected and 
divided into parts by them, and that, too, in such a 
thorough manner that on this firm basis can go up the 
faultless structure of the science of pedagogy. This 
fancy is so strange that I do not regard it as necessary 
to contradict it." 4 

Far from being satisfied that this particular genera- 
tion has achieved the final truth as to educational theory, 
or a truth sufficiently final to justify an artificial system 
in the schoolroom in place of life itself, Tolstoy feels 
that no generation is justified in putting intellectual 
shackles on the generation that is to succeed it. The 
culture of our own generation is only too apt to in- 
fluence the next; what we have to look out for is to 
see that it does not bind our children, and on the con- 
trary that they are left free for further development: 

"Every thinker expresses only that which has been 
consciously perceived by his epoch, consequently the edu- 
cation of the younger generation in the sense of this 
consciousness is quite superfluous; this consciousness is 
already inherent in the living generation." 5 

Tolstoy's final question is : "Shall we say frankly and 
honestly to ourselves that we do not know and cannot 
know what the future generations may need, but that 
we feel ourselves obliged to study these wants and that 
we wish to do so?" This is merely a way of saying that 
just as there are no "laws" of nature that mankind is 
bound to respect, so there are no pedagogical "laws" that 
can be allowed to hamper the almost infinite possibilities 
of individual development — and I believe that all the 
greatest educators are in accord with this principle. All 



SOCIALISM AND THE NEW EDUCATION 3O3 

would probably accept Tolstoy's generalization that "edu- 
cation as a premeditated formation of men according to 
certain patterns is sterile, unlawful, and impossible." 

Tolstoy wishes the child's freedom to be recognized 
from the first, though he agrees that this freedom must 
be subject to the wishes, that is, the freedom, of the 
parent. "The only criterion of pedagogy is freedom — 
the only method experience" : 

"In the popular school the right to determine what the 
child shall learn, no matter from what standpoint we 
may consider this question, belongs just as much to the 
parents who send the children to school, and so the 
answer to the question what the children are to be taught 
in a popular school can be got only from the masses. 
But perhaps we shall say that we, as highly cultured 
people, must not submit to the demands of the rude 
masses and that we must teach the masses what to wish. 
Thus many think, but to that I can give this one an- 
swer: give us a firm, incontrovertible foundation why 
this or that is chosen by you; show me a society in 
which the two diametrically opposed views on educa- 
tion do not exist among the highly cultured people; 
where it is not eternally repeated that if education falls 
into the hands of the clergy, the masses are educated 
in one sense, and if education falls into the hands of 
the progressists, the people are educated in another 
sense — show me a state of society where that does not 
exist and I will agree with you. So long as this does 
not exist there is no criterion except the freedom of 
the learner, and in matters of the popular school the 
place of the learning children is taken by their parents, 
that is, by the needs of the masses." 6 

Tolstoy, like Dewey, is opposed not only to religious 
instruction in the public schools, but to all moral educa- 
tion whatever in the ordinary sense of the term. It is 
needless to note that he believes both in religious and 



3O4 THE LARGER ASPECTS OF SOCIALISM 

moral instruction; but he will not trust governments or 
the ruling classes to say what this instruction shall be. 
His strictures are directed mainly against governmental 
religions instruction, but it will be seen that they apply 
also to moral teaching: 

"The government, the rulers, the ruling classes need 
this deception; with it their power is inseparably con- 
nected, and so the ruling classes always want this decep- 
tion to be practiced upon the children and maintained 
over the adults by means of an increased hypnotization, 
but the people who do not wish for the maintenance 
of the false social order, but on the contrary, for its 
change and who, above all else, wish for the good of 
those children with whom they enter into communion, 
must, with all their strength, try to save their children 
from this terrible deception. And so a complete in- 
difference of the children to religious questions and the 
rejection of all religious forms is still incomparably 
better than the Judseo-ecclesiastic instruction, even 
though in the most perfected forms." 7 

We can well realize that as long as the modern 
capitalistic state continues to exist lessons in patriotism, 
and in morality verging on the accepted religions, will 
continue to be taught. Here as elsewhere, Tolstoy's 
limitation is that of all non-Socialists, no matter how 
radical, namely, that he does not see that our class 
society must be abolished before any great revolutionary 
advance can be made in any direction. 

The martyred Francisco Ferrer of Spain has stated 
very ably the Socialist attitude toward the present edu- 
cational system. The founder of over a hundred free 
schools with some seventy thousand pupils and the 
partial inspirer of several hundred others, he was a 
man of large educational experience. The mere fact 
that he was feared by the Church in Spain as its chief 



SOCIALISM AND THE NEW EDUCATION 305 

enemy shows that, whatever his value as an educator, 
he was, at least, practical and successful, while the 
recognition of his schools by the present Spanish govern- 
ment indicates that his education was also of a pro- 
gressive character. It was Ferrer's belief that the lead- 
ing governments of the world, not only that of Spain, 
are endeavoring to use the public school systems for 
their own purposes. He felt that even in progressive 
countries like France, with which he was familiar, the 
public schools were far from creating that type of 
thought and action which is required for the most 
rapid advance of humanity : 

"We perceive the utter uselessness of this learning 
acquired in the schools by the systems of education at 
present in practice; we see that we waited and hoped 
in vain. For the organization of the school, far from 
spreading the ideal which we imagined, has made educa- 
tion the most powerful means of enslavement in the 
hands of the governing powers of to-day. Their teachers 
are only the conscious or unconscious instruments of 
these powers; modeled moreover according to their 
principles, they have from their youth up, and more 
than any one else, been subjected to the discipline of the 
authorities; few indeed are those who have escaped the 
influence of this domination, and these remain powerless, 
because the school organization constrains them so 
strongly that they cannot but obey it. It is not my pur- 
pose here to examine the nature of this organization. 
It is sufficiently well known for me to characterize it 
in one word : constraint. The school imprisons children 
physically, intellectually and morally in order to direct 
the development of their faculties in the paths desired. 
It deprives them of contact with nature in order to model 
them after its own pattern. And this is the explana- 
tion of all which I have here to set forth: The care 
which governments have taken to direct the education 



306 THE LARGER ASPECTS OF SOCIALISM 

of the people and the bankruptcy of the hopes of be- 
lievers in liberty. The education of to-day is nothing 
more than drill. I refuse to believe that the systems 
employed have been constructed with any definite design 
for bringing about the results desired. That would sup- 
pose genius. But things take place precisely as if this 
education responded to some vast unified conception. It 
could not have been better done. What accomplished 
this was simply that the leading inspiration was the prin- 
ciple of discipline and of authority which guides social 
organizers at all times. They have but one clearly de- 
fined idea, one will, viz. : Children must be accustomed 
to obey, to believe, to think, according to the social dog- 
mas which govern us. Hence, education cannot be other 
than such as it is to-day. It is not a matter of second- 
ing the spontaneous development of the faculties of the 
child, of leaving it free to satisfy its physical, intellectual 
and moral needs ; it is a matter of imposing ready made 
ideas upon it; a matter even of preventing it from ever 
thinking otherwise than is willed for the maintenance 
of the institutions of this society; it is a matter of 
making it an individual strictly adapted to the social 
mechanism." 

Our worst sin is by no means our failure to apply 
our own accepted educational ideals or to listen to the 
call of present-day science and democracy. For there 
are in evidence in educational thought since Herbart, 
Frcebel, Spencer, and Tolstoy, new and positively reac- 
tionary tendencies — aside from the negative evils due 
to the starvation of the public schools and the limita- 
tion of their further development to the single line of 
industrial and physical training, as already mentioned. 
Our class society, about to pass over from individual- 
istic, competitive, and private capitalism to "State So- 
cialism," has developed new retrogressive social theories 
which have an obvious and direct educational applica- 



SOCIALISM AND THE NEW EDUCATION 2>°7 

tion. Not only are the schools to be limited and re- 
stricted on financial and industrial grounds, but the whole 
system is to be based on a new dogma. 

Professor Lester F. Ward, for example, has evolved 
a theory which he calls sociocracy, under which society 
is to assume rational control and direction of itself 
through a new and higher politics and is to use educa- 
tion to this purpose. This view almost inevitably leads 
not to educating individuals to re-shape society but to 
educating them to fit into the work which society lays 
out for them. 

In the theories of "State Socialism" the public school 
takes the place held by the church in former times. 
As Monroe remarks, this indirect means of control over 
beliefs and ideas is more economical than the direct 
means (the church), "since it depends so largely on 
mere suggestion exercised by teachers rather than upon 
a force which arouses opposition" : 

"As education in the hands of the parent sought to 
control the child for the sake of his practical success 
in life, and the education of the church to control him 
for the sake of the organization and for his own eternal 
salvation, so the education of the state seeks to control 
the child for the sake of the welfare of society which 
includes the individual and his fellows as well. Thus 
as a form of control, education is merely an instrument 
of society similar to law, to opinion, and to various 
institutional customs and traditions. But as such it 
operates in a peculiar way, not directly by force, but 
indirectly through the suggestive power of ideas and 
through the impartation of knowledge, not immediately 
upon the adult, but through the medium of a coming 
generation." 8 

The state church, which was the great means of 
shaping the individual to "social" or ruling class purposes 



308 THE LARGER ASPECTS OF SOCIALISM 

under the landlord absolutisms of the Eighteenth Cen- 
tury and the first half of the Nineteenth, has lost its 
force, so that even individualistic capitalism already 
felt the need of some institution to replace it. But 
the theory and nature of individualistic capitalism did 
not allow any elaborate and complete system of state 
education — while the ultra-individualist like Spencer 
even opposed state education altogether. "State Social- 
ism" has no such scruples or limitations. Public educa- 
tion is now to fulfill the identical role formerly fulfilled 
by the church. 

Sometimes this "sociocratic" view of education is 
expressed in rather a subtle and plausible form. For 
example, Monroe says : "It is the power of adjustment 
to a changing environment, not the fixed adjustment in 
itself, that modern education seeks to secure for the 
individual as its highest product." 9 This expression is 
rather unclear, but, according to every modern psychol- 
ogy, the power of adjustment can only be acquired by 
the habit of adjustment. "State Socialism" then under- 
takes more than merely to adjust the individual to exist- 
ing society. It undertakes to make him adjustable to 
any society, so that he may still be more serviceable to 
the ruling classes than if he were merely fitted to serve 
their purposes at the present moment. Here we have 
the very reverse of the principle of Sidis, that the indi- 
vidual is to be kept free from all habits, and of the prin- 
ciple of Dewey that the individual is not to be adapted to 
society at all, but is to learn how to re-shape and re- 
form it. 

Nevertheless we may expect not only that the advance 
of our public schools, until Socialists begin to control, 
will be limited largely to the line of industrial training, 
but also that our whole educational thought will be 
recast in this "State Socialist" mold, so far - as this is 



SOCIALISM AND THE NEW EDUCATION 309 

practicable. This will be most undeniably in evidence 
in the universities, where the "State Socialist" theories 
in philosophy, science, history, sociology, psychology, 
ethics, etc., more or less as I have outlined them, are 
already sweeping everything before them. The same 
theories will be applied, in more subtle ways, throughout 
the whole public school system. 

Even some of the more advanced of our leading edu- 
cators, to say nothing of the reactionaries that preside 
over some of the higher institutions, are now advocat- 
ing anti-democratic class schools. Ex-President Eliot of 
Harvard, who wants four or six times as much 
money expended on our public schools, and shows that 
this expenditure is necessary even to bring them up 
to existing standards, 10 advocates a three-class school 
system, one kind of school for the upper class, another 
kind for the middle class and a third kind for the masses 
of the people. He strangely believes that this is 
"democratic," provided the advance of the child from 
one system to the other is made "easy." n Of course 
if this transition was made really "easy," and every 
child was given an equal opportunity to be advanced 
according to his individual merits alone there would be 
no three-fold division of the schools for upper, lower 
and middle classes, but a unified system. What Dr. 
Eliot means by "easy" promotion can only be that a 
certain percentage of lower and middle class children 
may be given the opportunities enjoyed by all upper 
class children — and the percentage of the lower class 
must be very small, as his calculations for the public 
schools make no allowances at all for scholarships, and 
the masses are either unable in 98 cases out of 100 
(as school statistics show) to keep their children in 
school long enough to secure a higher education, or 
else deny, usually with good reason, that the schools are 



310 THE LARGER ASPECTS OF SOCIALISM 

good enough to justify the expenditure and time re- 
quired. Moreover, this small proportion, as I have 
pointed out, merely strengthens upper class conservatism 
by absorbing the cream of the working class, and makes 
further democratic advance all the more difficult. 

The views of President Hadley of Yale are equally 
typical and anti-democratic. He warmly commends 
some of the most reactionary features of the German 
secondary school system. The German secondary 
schools, though maintained largely at public expense, 
charge a tuition fee. President Hadley says that the 
object is not financial but to restrict high school edu- 
cation "to those who are willing to pay for it," whereas 
it is obvious that it tends also to restrict these 
schools to those who are able to pay. He says 
that this fee helps the Germans to give an education 
satisfactory to "business men," which we need not 
doubt. The German government further favors the 
graduates of these schools by allowing them to be freed 
from two years of barracks. President Hadley finds 
that this is an advantage for middle class children, but 
that military training is good for the great bulk of the 
people: 

"If you fail to pass the examination, you have at least 
two years in barracks, amid surroundings which are 
inevitably disagreeable and oppressive to the man who 
has been brought up in comfortable surroundings. 

"For those who do not pass the test — for the great 
bulk of the people who cannot afford the time and 
expense incidental to a full high school course — the two 
years of military service teach lessons which are just 
as valuable in peace as in war." 12 

Here the eminent educator admits that the masses 
miss the high school education, not because they are 



SOCIALISM AND THE NEW EDUCATION 3II 

unwilling, but because they are unable, to pay for it. 
Far from considering this an intolerable evil he wants 
to create further class distinctions. The barracks teach 
hygiene and physical training, as he says, but the ques- 
tion is, do they teach these things as well as they can be 
taught outside the barracks? Indeed President Hadley 
shows unintentionally that they do not and that he 
admires some of their reactionary features. He praises 
the "discipline and good order" of the barracks, and says, 
against all evidence, that the treatment of the recruit 
is "humane" and that the "isolated cases of brutality" 
that occur are "comparatively rare exceptions," until 
we might believe that we were listening to the most 
ardent German advocate of militarism. He says that 
the majority of intelligent and "patriotic" Germans 
agree with him. Of course if the four million Socialists 
are to be eliminated as not being "patriots," this is true. 
He says that the army has been growing in popularity 
since 1871, failing to note that the Socialists, who would 
wipe the army off the map, have increased at least ten- 
fold in that period. 

At the bottom, President Hadley' s admiration of the 
German educational system is obviously due to its sup- 
posedly superior "discipline" in preparing the young 
for "the general duties of the citizen." We know that 
militarism, even more in Germany than elsewhere, pro- 
duces servility and crushes the individual. If, however, 
"his efficiency as a laborer is better" on account of such 
discipline, as Hadley says it is, we may confess that 
it fulfills the object of every ruling-class education. 

Without multiplying illustrations, let us note the 
recommendations of President G. Stanley Hall of Clark 
University to the New York school board, for he is 
perhaps our leading pedagogical specialist. President 
Hall favors flogging to inspire discipline, the teaching 



312 THE LARGER ASPECTS OF SOCIALISM 

of religion to inspire docility, and also vocational 
training — fortunately he does not disguise it under the 
name of education, industrial or otherwise. He objects 
especially to what he calls paternalism, which is the 
only policy, as I have shown, which can secure even 
that limited progress in the schools which is possible 
under capitalism. "Paternalism" includes, according to 
Hall, also such radical and effective advances of the 
schools toward the people as free medical service, free 
lunches, free transportation, and, above all, such a bill 
as that which came near passing the Wisconsin legisla- 
ture, appropriating $17,000,000 to give every girl and 
boy in that state the means to go through high school, 
college and university. 

With such leaders as these, we cannot be surprised 
when we see teachers' organizations occasionally taking 
reactionary positions also. There is a rather wide ten- 
dency to apply to all the working classes some such 
educational principle as that so bluntly recommended 
for the negro by the Southern Educational Association, 
when it declared (at its 191 1 meeting) that the negro's 
education should be "industrial" and not literary or 
"cultural," and explained that the practical industries it 
proposes, such as agriculture and cooking, aim at his 
"physical welfare." This is undoubtedly the motive, 
usually not so frankly expressed, of most of the advo- 
cates of the so-called industrial education for the chil- 
dren of workingmen. 

The general tendency of this industrial education is 
directly the opposite to what modern civilization re- 
quires : 

"The individual of the immediate future, whether he 
be a business man, a professional man, or a manual 
worker, must have a broad educational foundation so 
he may be able to readily adapt himself {o shifting 






SOCIALISM AND THE NEW EDUCATION 313 

industrial scenes and conditions. 'The future,' writes 
Professor Giddings, 'belongs to the adaptable man,' 
and it will be the function of the schools of the future 
to produce this adaptable, pliable man. . . . The 
classic educational edifice which was revered a genera- 
tion ago, built upon the foundation of a purely intel- 
lectual, professional, business or trade training, is now 
crumbling and cracking under the unyielding pressure 
of modern complex civilization." 13 

The natural tendency, that is, is away from that 
emphasis on occupational and trade training demanded 
by business men (for other people's children, whom 
they wish to employ) and also unfortunately by some 
short-sighted mechanics, who hope their children will 
have a monopoly of this special training — which is not 
at all the business men's intention, as they propose to 
open the doors of this kind of education to the children 
of the unskilled also, and so to make skilled employees 
plentiful and cheap. 

While the demand of the people and of most educa- 
tors is for a broader education than we now have, the 
demand of the business men is for a narrower one. 
The interest of the masses requires two kinds of edu- 
cational progress, an improvement and extension of 
general education for all, and after this a special occu- 
pational or vocational training. The business com- 
munity, who are also taxpayers, want less of the former 
kind of education and more of the latter. But it would 
be unpopular to confess this policy, so they merely de- 
mand more industrial education, while resisting any 
considerable increase in expenditures for any other kind 
of education. Thus the normal growth of general edu- 
cation is automatically but effectively checked; there 
is some improvement, but only a small fraction of what 
is required and what the community can well afford : 



314 THE LARGER ASPECTS OF SOCIALISM 

"In the name of two principles, 'industrial education' 
and 'business methods,' the public schools are being 
commercialized. Commercialization means reduced 
wages for the teacher, fewer educational 'fads' or im- 
provements, in short reduced expense per pupil [and 
where it does not go this far it means checking normal 
development in all these directions]. The antithesis is 
finance vs. education ; the taxpayer vs. the child ; special 
interests vs. society." 14 

The "special interests" are not only the taxpayers, but 
the employers and capitalists. And the antithesis does 
not always mean an actual decrease in present expendi- 
tures. Carlton himself points out that a large part of 
the $400,000,000 or $600,000,000 spent on criminals 
might be saved to the taxpayer by better schools. If 
this is true the taxpayers, when better enlightened and 
organized, will not object to a certain increase of taxes 
for schools. Better schools might save equally large 
sums in better health, and as only $450,000,000 are now 
spent on the common schools, the taxpayers may ulti- 
mately consent to very considerably increased expendi- 
tures. 

But this is only a small part of the possibilities. Most 
of the taxes are paid by capitalists or employers. If 
the industrial efficiency of employees can be sufficiently 
increased by schools, they might consent to allow several 
times as much money to be expended on them as at 
present. But there is a rigid limit somewhere to all 
increased expenditure that would bring a margin of 
profit to taxpayer or employer. It is when his limit 
is reached that we shall see the antithesis of "the tax- 
payer vs. the child" and "special interests vs. society" 
in its naked ugliness. The conflict exists to-day and 
is holding school progress back when compared to what 
it would be were taxpayers and employers 4 given no 



SOCIALISM AND THE NEW EDUCATION 315 

special consideration. But because there is a certain 
limited progress, and because these interests require 
this degree of progress, their reactionary influence is 
somewhat cloaked and escapes full exposure. 

In discussing economic and political Socialism (in 
"Socialism As It Is") I have shown how a revolutionary 
change in education, which would be more costly 
perhaps than all other reforms put together, is there- 
fore less likely than any other reform to be carried 
out before we have democratic Socialism. Indeed I 
made educational reform a crucial test, for the demand 
for special advantages for one's own children is perhaps 
the last which any privileged class will abandon. If 
they give way here, then indeed the establishment of 
a social democracy is certain — even without the long 
revolutionary period that may otherwise be necessary. 

Under these conditions, how are the nation's public 
schools advancing? We are told that the expenditures 
on common schools increased from $220,000,000 in 1900 
to $425,000,000 in 1 910. This sounds like an enormous 
increase. But we must remember that the increase 
of the number of pupils was 15 per cent. Then we 
must remember that it took about $1.25 in 1910 to 
purchase the same goods that cost $1.00 in 1900. In 
the meanwhile other governmental expenditures aside 
from schools, for example on army and navy, were in- 
creasing far more rapidly. 

When we try to find an accurate financial measure 
for what each child is getting we must ask first of 
all how many teachers there are in proportion to the 
pupils, or what fraction of a teacher each pupil secures? 
While the number of pupils has increased fifteen per 
cent., the number of teachers has increased only twenty 
per cent. If we take ex-President Eliot's standard that 
the size of classes should be reduced from forty or 



316 THE LARGER ASPECTS OF SOCIALISM 

fifty, as at present, to ten or fifteen, this means that we 
need three or four times as many teachers. At the 
above rate of progress, it may be seen, this object would 
be attained in about one thousand years S 

The amount expended on the public schools, $450,- 
000,000, looks large, but it is not. It amounts to less 
than $5 per capita. We expend an equal sum on mili- 
tarism (army, navy and pensions), and immensely 
greater amounts on several forms of luxury. The 
annual bill for alcoholic liquors is $2,000,000,000 
and for tobacco $1,200,000,000. Jewelry and plate take 
$800,000,000 and automobiles $500,000,000, not to 
mention innumerable other luxuries which, when added 
together, would make a total of billions. Moreover our 
consumption in many of these lines is increasing faster 
than the growth of the public schools. What satisfac- 
tion can we have, then, either in this rate of develop- 
ment or the insignificant total of expenditure now 
reached. If we can afford $4,000,000,000 for three 
luxuries alone can we not afford that sum to mould 
the human race of the next generation? Ten times 
the present amount expended, or $4,500,000,000, which 
would be only one-seventh of our national income, would 
scarcely be too much. Of course this sum would include 
the maintenance at public expense of all children who 
showed any aptitude for the higher courses, and there 
would be a corresponding saving to parents. So that 
after all only about a tenth, perhaps, of the nation's 
income would be going to children — which is surely 
not excessive. Part of the money needed could come 
from a heavy tax on ground rent, part from heavily 
graduated income taxes, and part from heavy taxes 
on luxuries such as those mentioned, tobacco, alcoholic 
drinks, jewelry, etc. 

This extraordinary backwardness of the public schools 



SOCIALISM AND THE NEW EDUCATION 2> l 7 

when compared to the progress of the rest of our 
civilization is world-wide. In none of the great nations 
is it worse than in Prussia, which has long been held 
up as a world's model. For in Prussia, as elsewhere, 
the schools for the people are dominated by the upper 
classes. In the debate in the Prussian Landtag (March 
1 6, 1 91 2) it was shown that in seventy schools there 
were as many as one hundred and seventy pupils to 
a teacher, while the majority of the children were in 
schools that were either ungraded or had only two 
classes. In the towns even, where much more money 
is expended, only $20 falls to each child instructed. 
The towns furnish ninety per cent, of this sum, while 
the Prussian government provides less than ten per cent, 
or seven marks per child ($1.75). Yet this same gov- 
ernment contributes 900 marks ($225), or more than 
one hundred times as ^much, to each university student. 
The leading organ of the German Socialists, in com- 
menting on the debate in the Landtag, where these facts 
were brought out, summed up the Socialist position. 
First of all, it pointed out that "the educational ideals 
of the great educators, which are accepted by the great 
majority of teachers, are not to be realized except 
through great social transformations." Second : "The 
majority of the German teachers have long demanded, 
for example, the unified school. This means that the 
people's school shall not be, as to-day, a proletarian and 
pauper school, but a stage in the education of all pupils. 
The higher educational institutions are to be organically 
connected with this common school for all, so that every- 
one who is capable can pass through the higher schools, 
without regard to his birth, his social position, or the 
property of his parents." 15 It will be noticed that 
here again the Socialists are moving exactly in the 
opposite direction to the prevailing tendency to 



318 THE LARGER ASPECTS OF SOCIALISM 

separate our preparatory schools and courses from 
those which are destined to give the child his final 
schooling — and thus to make class schools. They have 
such schools now in Germany and the Socialists claim 
that even the teachers, from among whom the govern- 
ment continually weeds out all Socialists, are seeking to 
abolish them. 

Finally it is shown why no great improvement is 
to be expected : "The ruling reactionaries are only too 
well aware that giving the right of education to the 
capable children of the working classes means nothing- 
less than a general breach in the economic and political 
privileges of our ruling classes." 16 And if, as has 
happened in several other countries, the capitalist 
"progressives" come into power instead of the "reac- 
tionaries" there will be no fundamental change. Indeed 
the prevailing educational tendencies I have mentioned 
are almost exclusively those of the so-called progressive 
element. 

If economic and class restrictions were removed, on 
the other hand, there is no reason to suppose that the 
public schools would not be susceptible of revolutionary 
development in every direction. In the previous chapter 
I have summarized the hopes and plans of several of our 
most able and practical educators. But the possibility of 
the removal of such restrictions suggests immediately 
several other lines of equally promising and radical ad- 
vance. 

Only part of the child's life can be in the school 
even in the reorganized society of the future. The in- 
dividual instruction that now occupies such a large 
part of the school hours will be taken up by parents 
and others outside of the school, and the school will be 
devoted almost exclusively to activities that require 
either a large material equipment or groups of chil- 



SOCIALISM AND THE NEW EDUCATION 319 

dren or both. Parents will have the time, intelligence 
and even the normal school training to do a great 
deal of this instruction, including nearly all book 
knowledge. Lecture courses, with moving pictures, 
phonographs, etc., will be open to children in the same 
way that higher courses are open to young people; 
nearly every subject will be embraced; the children will 
attend voluntarily, and they will not only learn, they 
will be moulded ; life will be made interesting to them 
at every point, they will be inspired. The correspondence 
schools that are now so successful in giving so many 
kinds of secondary technical instruction will be taken up 
by educational authorities and extended to every subject 
in which the child is interested. Children's publications 
will be improved and will extend their question boxes, 
so that, with the aid of parents, every purely intellectual 
need of the child will be attended to outside the school. 
If the child's whole life is to be filled we must and 
will have a new children's world. Mrs. Gilman has 
shown how even that institution that is nearest the child, 
the home, is totally unadapted to its needs, that the 
child has only begun to be considered in the building 
of houses, and that only in those of the rich. And 
the child's life has a still better prospect of growing 
up around the schools of the future, where thousands 
may be gathered together. Now that school con- 
centration is being applied in the country, why should 
it not be applied in the cities also? Why should not 
the large cities provide "children's universities" and 
technical schools, groups of buildings, workshops, gym- 
nasiums, libraries, playgrounds, where both equipment 
and teachers could be more highly specialized and the 
opportunities presented to children multiplied many 
fold? Such centers, which might still better be called 
"children's cities," would take care of all lectures, amuse- 



320 THE LARGER ASPECTS OF SOCIALISM 

ments, clubs, and functions now attempted by social set- 
tlements. 

In the unearned ground rents of cities alone, to say 
nothing of graduated income taxes, the cities have 
ample funds with which to carry out this work, and it 
is certain that every citizen whose children attend the 
public schools would find such expenditures justified. 
Only the rich and well-to-do, who pay the bulk of the 
taxes and send their children to private schools, are in 
the way. 

Present-day educators, so often hopeless as to any 
far-reaching remedy for the evils of capitalist society 
and hoping for so little advance even within the school, 
naturally despair of shaping the child's whole environ- 
ment to correspond with their educational ideal But 
the Socialist educator feels no such necessity for com- 
promise or surrender. He proposes that the child's 
entire life shall be arranged for its best benefit and 
believes that this can be accomplished within a genera- 
tion if Socialism has its way. 



XIII 
MAN, WOMAN, AND SOCIALISM 

Anyone who has ever read the most influential and 
widely circulated book ever written on woman must 
realize how intimately this question is interwoven with 
Socialism. It is no mere coincidence that the author 
of this book, August Bebel, is at the same time the 
most influential of all living Socialists. 

Bebel's "Woman" is undoubtedly more important 
than all the other Socialist writings on the subject put 
together. But it was first written a generation ago, 
and the great German statesman has been too much 
occupied with other matters to fundamentally change 
his early standpoint, even if he had desired to do so. 
Bebel's book, therefore, is based in part on the material- 
ism of many of the earlier German Socialists and is 
limited at other points by the science and philosophy 
of the time when he wrote. While he has been followed 
very largely by the later writers, they have the immense 
advantage over him of having before them the modern 
woman's movement which had scarcely begun when 
Bebel first wrote — and women themselves may surely 
be expected to contribute more to this subject, on some 
sides, than men. Certainly a literature written by men 
alone could not compare with a literature written by 
women as well as men. 

321 



322 THE LARGER ASPECTS OF SOCIALISM 

The leading women writers on this subject to-day are 
Socialists, but they have gone far deeper into the sub- 
ject than Bebel, and it is only necessary to mention a 
few of his positions to show how far we have progressed 
since he first wrote. We shall then be able to see from 
a brief study of these modern writers how much more 
intimately the subject is involved with Socialism than 
even Bebel imagined. 

Bebel recognizes that the physical and mental sides 
of our nature are closely bound together. But he un- 
questionably considers the physical as the more basic : 

"If the human organism is to develop normally and 
healthfully it is essential that no portion of the human 
body should be neglected, and that no natural impulse 
should be denied its normal satisfaction. Every organ 
should perform the functions which it has been destined 
by nature to perform unless the whole organism is to 
suffer. The laws of the physical development of man 
must be studied and observed as well as the laws of 
mental development. The mental activity of a human 
being depends upon the physiological condition of his 
organs. Physical and mental vigor are closely linked. 
An injury to one has a detrimental effect upon the 
other. The so-called animal instincts are not inferior 
to mental requirements. Both are products of the same 
organism and are mutually interdependent. . . . 

"Such being the intensity of sexual impulse, it is not 
to be wondered at that with both men and women sexual 
abstinence frequently leads to serious disorders of the 
nervous system, and in some cases even to insanity and 
suicide." 1 

Undoubtedly the last remark is true, but later writers 
have shown that it is equally true that sexual abstinence 
as frequently leads to no serious physical disorders of 
any kind, 






MAN, WOMAN, AND SOCIALISM $ 2 3 

Bebel denies that the sexual impulse is weaker among 
women than among men, a statement which in this 
unqualified form is surely misleading. The impulse is 
radically different in women, weaker at some points 
and stronger at others. It is only by overlooking its 
complexities that we can make any quantitative com- 
parison of the whole sex development of women and 
men. 

Bebel says that "where the sexual contrast has not 
been realized the full height of existence of the human 
being is not developed." The supposition here is that 
there is a more or less definite amount of sexual ex- 
pression which constitutes the minimum demanded by 
nature. On the contrary, the extent of this expression 
required by nature varies tremendously in every normal 
human being. While full development is certainly im- 
possible without some sexual life, and equally impossible 
if it dominates everything, the question remains whether 
such sexual life should be kept at the maximum or at the 
minimum that a sanely balanced existence permits or 
at some intermediate point. The general tone of 
Bebel's work would suggest the opinion that the sexual 
impulses should be expressed to the fullest degree con- 
sistent with physical and mental health. 

Bebel says that man is entitled to the normal satis- 
faction of his desires, and that the sexual impulse is 
simply natural like hunger and thirst. The modern 
women writers deny that the attraction of the sexes is 
in any way comparable with hunger, or that it is 
even remotely correct to speak of the "satisfaction" of 
the sex impulse, and still less of its "normal satisfac- 
tion." 

In his later editions Bebel quotes with approval from 
Dr. Elizabeth Blackwell's essay on "The Moral Educa- 
tion of the Young in Relation to Sex" : 



324 THE LARGER ASPECTS OF SOCIALISM 

"Sexual impulse exists as an inevitable condition of 
life and the foundation of society. It is the greatest 
power in human nature. . . . While undeveloped it 
is not an object of the thoughts, but it remains never- 
theless the central force of life." 

This is an expression of the view, now very widely 
held among medical men, and especially by the followers 
of Freud, but it is not accepted by the modern woman. 
That sex is a central force of life is undeniable, and 
it is of the utmost importance that this should be fully 
recognized. That it is the central force of life, or 
that any element whatever can be denominated as the 
central force of life, is in contradiction to modern 
thought and modern science. 

Finally the Socialists and radicals of the day will 
agree with Bebel that the sexual relation is a private 
concern and that "no one is accountable to anyone else 
and no third person has a right to interfere." But that 
no one has a right to interfere does not mean that it 
is a matter of indifference to others whether individuals 
are developing or degenerating in their private lives. 
And the various kinds of "satisfaction of sexual im- 
pulse" differ so profoundly in their effect on the in- 
dividual, and therefore on society and the race, that 
the effort to discriminate between them is more im- 
portant perhaps than any other subject to which men 
can give their attention. 

In spite of such limitations as these Bebel has probably 
had more influence than all his successors put together 
in demanding, in the relation between men and women, 
absolute freedom both from moral coercion and legal 
restraint. He quotes a woman writer, Matilde Reich- 
hardt-Stromberg, as demanding for every woman the 
right, whenever she sees fit, to form relations with men, 
"in order to preserve her equilibrium, just^as they do." 



MAN, WOMAN, AND SOCIALISM 325 

After quoting a passage in which this writer refers 
with approval to the lives of Goethe and George Sand, 
Bebel says : 

"But why should only 'great souls' lay claim to this 
right, and not also the others who are no great souls? 
If a Goethe and a George Sand — to select only these 
two from among the many who have done and are 
doing likewise — could follow the inclinations of their 
hearts, if, on Goethe's love affairs especially, entire 
libraries are published that are devoured in a sort of 
reverent ecstasy by his admirers, why should we con- 
demn in others what becomes an object of admiration 
in the case of a Goethe or a George Sand? . 

"In 'Jacques,' George Sand depicts a husband who 
judges the illicit relation of his wife with another man 
in the following manner : 'no human being can com- 
mand love, and none is guilty if he feels or goes without 
it. What degrades the woman is the lie ; what constitutes 
the adultery is not the hour she grants to her lover, but 
the night that she thereupon spends with her husband.' " 2 

The larger part of Bebel's work, however, is taken 
up with the economic aspects of the woman question, 
matters which have now become more or less familiar 
to the whole reading public, and in this field he is at 
his best — though both his fundamental assumptions and 
his conclusions differ widely from those of to-day. 

Of the leaders of present-day opinion on woman and 
related subjects, marriage, love, sex, and the home, the 
most influential with the general public are undoubt- 
edly Ellen Key and Charlotte Perkins Gilman. Both 
are unjustly regarded as mere specialists on such 
questions, but aside from their specialty both are un- 
deniably writers and sociologists of the first rank, while 
Ellen Key is also a profound student of modern litera- 
ture and philosophy, and Mrs. Gilman an adept of 



326 THE LARGER ASPECTS OF SOCIALISM 

political economy and the philosophy of biology in its 
social application. 

Ellen Key, Mrs. Gilman, Olive Schreiner, and all the 
best known writers on these questions are still per- 
meated to some degree by the philosophy of the genera- 
tion now beginning to pass away. To some extent all 
three are under the influence of "evolutionism," both in 
the broad and narrow senses of the term ; but all are to 
a still higher degree pragmatists and Socialists, sub- 
consciously nearly always and often in their conscious 
principles also. All three agree, not only that Socialism 
is necessary to establish social and economic justice, but 
that it is absolutely indispensable for the solution of 
all the deeper problems connected with women, sex, 
love, marriage, children, and the home. 

Ellen Key is most nearly emancipated from the evolu- 
tion fetish. Yet even she imagines that, with other 
"evolutionists," she is considering the practical problems 
of the day under the aspect of the centuries — though 
she does not go so far as to speak continually of millions 
of years and of aeons, as Mrs. Gilman does. For ex- 
ample, she says that to-day the confusion of thought is 
to such an extent aggravated by the confusion of the 
feelings that "it may take centuries for new ideas of 
justice to work a change," and that love as the basis 
for the relation between man and woman, having long 
been proscribed almost as a crime, "probably will be 
still treated about the year 2000 as a culpable error." 
These are excellent examples of the tendency of evolu- 
tionists to set maximum limits for the rate of progress 
that they consider to be possible. Yet who shall say 
that within a generation or two the revolution in these 
matters may not go even farther than Ellen Key has 
ever been able to imagine? 

Ellen Key is, as a rule however, a thorough-going 



MAN, WOMAN, AND SOCIALISM 327 

and conscious pragmatist. The point of departure in 
her thinking is always human needs : 

"An increasing civilization means a more and more 
perfect satisfaction of increasingly complicated and 
higher needs. . . . It is our needs that set us in 
motion. . . . 

"By his power of creating ideals and the ever increas- 
ing demand for happiness which results, man has deep- 
ened his instinct of spiritual needs." 3 

The adjective "spiritual" in this last expression is 
unfortunate, but it need cause no misgiving as to Key's 
fundamental thought. Her effort, even if not always 
successful, is to consider the soul and the body as 
absolutely one. For her all good lies in "an increasingly 
soulful sensuousness or an increasingly sensuous soul- 
fulness," and woman is not happy when she "has not 
even had her senses satisfied" or when "the soul received 
nothing from the senses and gave nothing." Un- 
doubtedly it would be preferable if the antiquated terms 
soul and body, so long and so deeply ingrained in our 
consciousness as separate entities, could both be dropped 
altogether, but this involves a literary problem of the 
first magnitude and perhaps one that is still insoluble. 

Key's psychology is as pragmatic as her philosophy. 
The original impulses are to be harmonized not by the 
intellect but by one another: 

"No obstructing of appetites, but only their release in 
other directions can really purify them. Passions can 
be curbed only by stronger passions." 4 

Resting on this view of psychology, according to 
which the human being is a highly organized, and a 
highly, though not completely, unified whole, morality 
consists in always taking the broader as against the 
narrower view. "It sees things as a whole." Indeed 



328 THE LARGER ASPECTS OF SOCIALISM 

Key takes a standpoint as broad as that of either Stirner 
or Nietzsche, by both of whom she is doubtless in- 
fluenced : 

"Because the means of life must never eclipse the 
meaning of life — which is to live with one's whole being 
and thus to be able to impart an ever greater fullness 
of life — it is immoral to live solely either for sanctity 
or for work, fatherland or humanity, or even love, for 
man is to live by all these. His exclusion from one of 
these means of full humanity can never be compensated 
by his participation in any of the others, just as little 
as one of his senses can be replaced by another, even 
though the latter be perfected under the necessity of 
serving in the place of the last one. And the resignation 
which prematurely contents itself with part of the rights 
of its human nature instead of aspiring to the whole, 
such resignation is a falling to sleep in the snow. It 
is undeniably a calmer state than that of keeping one's 
soul on the stretch for new experiences, for in that 
case one must also be prepared for new wounds, and 
he who keeps his suffering awake can be sure of more 
pain than he who puts it to sleep with an opiate. But 
no criterion is meaner than that of suffering or not 
suffering. The question is only what a man suffers 
from and what he becomes — for himself and others— 
or does not become as the result of his pain." 5 

The great duty of man, to himself and to others, 
negatively, is not to limit his development in any direc- 
tion, and positively, to pursue that development to the 
utmost. All crimes then become crimes against one- 
self, as, for example, the failure to love in the fullest 
way: 

"To drift into relations where one has not the hun- 
dredth part of the consent of one's innermost ego is not 
proving but wasting one's personality, for every action 
which is less than ourselves degrades our personality." 6 



MAN, WOMAN, AND SOCIALISM 329 

Indeed the only true religion is that of love — that 
is, of the fullest self -development, which takes place 
only through love : 

"Those emotional needs and powers of the soul which 
formerly were nourished by and directed towards 
religion have been nourished by and directed towards 
love." 7 

Religion itself is rejected by Key, not on critical 
grounds, but because of its inferiority, for developing 
the personality when compared with love. 

Key is far from considering either present-day society 
or the human race as God. The fullest personal de- 
velopment, as seen especially in love, is more important 
than all other considerations, both to the individual and 
to the race : 

"Personal love, as now developed by civilization, has 
become so complicated, comprehensive and involved that 
not only does it constitute in itself (independently of 
its mission to the race) a great asset in life, but it also 
raises or lowers the value of all else. . . . 

"The happiness of the individual is the most impor- 
tant condition also for the enhancement of the race!' 8 

While keeping individuals as the basis of all her 
thinking, Key by no means reverts to any theories of 
natural rights. The full development of the individual 
is not a right that society ought to recognize, but a 
duty of the individual to himself and others that society 
must recognize for the sake of the common good, and 
that the individual must insist upon at any cost : 

"As soon as it is recognized that the individual is also 
an end in himself, with the right and duty of satisfying 
in the first place his own demands according to his 
nature, then it must remain the private affair of the 



330 THE LARGER ASPECTS OF SOCIALISM 

individual whether he will either leave altogether un- 
fulfilled his mission as a member of the race, or whether 
he will limit its fulfillment." 9 

As a last resort, that individual who does not feel 
that society is granting him his rights has the duty to 
himself and to the race to refuse to propagate the 
species. If "State Socialism" were to go to the length 
of interfering to the slightest degree with love or 
marriage, and led to conditions the individual felt as 
unacceptable, then we must agree with Key that this 
would indeed be the only sensible resource: 

"When existence is made up of beings with starved 
hearts, frozen souls, obliterated characteristics — what 
materials will these afford for constructing the society 
of which they will form a part? Will they even care to 
produce children as raw material for the human factories 
or the necessaries for the maintenance of that life in 
which the elements of personal happiness are want- 
ing?" 10 

We see that while Key is an evolutionist and a 
Socialist she is at the same time a profound individualist 
— though not, of course, in the commercial sense of 
standing for capitalistic or property rights. 

"The believers in life are everywhere distinguished by 
their determination to give to every relation the value 
of the unique, the stamp of the exceptional, that which 
has never been before and will never come again." " 

This social individualism not only insists on the in- 
finite importance of unique individuals, but, like that 
of Ibsen, opposes all abstract ideals as possible dangers. 

"The developed personality ought not even to desire 
in the future the sole authority of his own ideal — since 
a descent from the diverse to the uniform would be a 



MAN, WOMAN, AND SOCIALISM 33I 

retrogressive development — the effort of society to press 
into a single ideal form life's infinite multitude of differ- 
ent cases under the same circumstances or of the same 
cases under different circumstances, the same influences 
on different personalities or the same personalities under 
different influences." 12 

Evolutionist as she is, Key even rejects, in the name 
of this social individualism, "the idea of the family" 
and "judicial considerations of the 'historical origin' 
of marriage" : 

"When every life is regarded as an end in itself from 
the point of view that it can never be lived again; that 
it must, therefore, be lived as completely and greatly 
as possible; when every personality is valued as an 
asset in life that has never existed before and will never 
occur again, then also the erotic happiness or unhappi- 
ness of a human being will be treated as of greater 
importance, and not to himself alone. No, it will be 
so also to the whole community — through the life and 
the work his happiness may give the race or his un- 
happiness deprive it of." 13 

Key agrees with Nietzsche in many aspects of her 
ethics. Individuals who circumscribe their lives in any 
way are doing far more harm to themselves and others, 
as a rule, than those who merely perform some posi- 
tively "evil" action: 

"A youth with large blinkers shunning the delights of 
the senses, the varied joy of life, the mobility of the 
fancy; a youth devoid of all spiritual adventure — such, 
with all its 'purity/ would be a dead asset in life. 

"Those on the other hand who preserve but control 
the wealth of suggestion of the sexual life will be — even 
though their control has not always been complete — of 
infinitely greater service to existence." 14 



332 THE LARGER ASPECTS OF SOCIALISM 

The chief duty of man is not merely to develop him- 
self consciously in every direction but to give a large 
play to his deepest unconscious impulses : 

"For in order to attain to the true tragic greatness a 
man must be prepared to surrender himself uncondi- 
tionally to, and to suffer through, what is greatest in 
his nature, his innermost ego." 15 

Still more strikingly Nietzschean is Key's insistence 
not only that morality must be cut differently to fit 
every individual, but that certain broad classifications 
can be made — each of which requires a different ethic. 
There is one code of conduct which is in every way 
better for stronger natures to follow, and another that 
is better for the weaker. For example : "Great love, 
like great genius, can never be a duty; both are life's 
gracious gifts to its elect." 

If the weaker class tries to adopt the ideas and 
standards which are only adapted to the stronger, then 
the result may be disastrous, for it may happen that 
"their powers of loving were small, while their ideas 
of love were great." 

Indeed Key fearlessly and definitely combats the 
whole Christian ethical view, as, for example, when it 
opposes free divorce. And in opposing that view she 
at the same rejects altruism generally: 

"It is unfortunate when a Christian ethical view 
stands in the way of serious and genuine chances of so 
renewing life that it may be more valuable to the com- 
munity as well as to the individual himself. People who 
are equipped with rich possibilities still allow themselves 
to be decided by unconditional consideration for others' 
feelings. . . . 

"That the race not only needs people willing to lose 
their lives in order to gain them, but also people with 



MAN, WOMAN, AND SOCIALISM 333 

courage to sacrifice others in order to win their own — 
this is a truth which nevertheless must be indissolubly 
bound up with an evolutionist view of life, to which 
the will to preserve and enhance one's own existence 
is a duty as undeniable as that of preserving and en- 
hancing the lives of others by self-sacrifice." 1G 

Not only may "a 'transgression' be right for one 
nature and not for another," but "the same sacrifice 
may be sublime at one period of our lives and shameful 
at another." That is, we must have a distinct morality 
not only for each individual, but for each new stage 
in each individual's development. Key's basic thought 
is the same as that of Nietzsche, that what we need 
is not to cut our lives down negatively by any kind 
of morality whatever, but a civilization and a society 
which shall increase the amount and variety of 
life: 

"A great and healthy will to live is what our time 
needs in the matter of the erotic emotions and claims." 17 

I have up to this point concerned myself chiefly with 
Key's philosophy, using her conclusions as to love and 
sex only as illustrations. Let me now review these 
latter views briefly on their own account. It is evident 
that if her logic is sound, which it usually is, these 
conclusions also cannot fail to be in accord with prag- 
matism and Socialism. 

Ellen Key's feeling about the supreme importance of 
love is not entirely an outgrowth of her general 
philosophy, but with this feeling as an additional and 
more or less independent basis of her thought we have 
now all the fundamental principles upon which she 
builds. 

Love, she holds, is beginning to set its stamp on the 
whole spirit of the age, and moreover it is rapidly 



334 THE LARGER ASPECTS OF SOCIALISM 

taking shape in the consciousness of the many instead 
of being clearly recognized and acted upon only by 
the few, as was the case a few generations ago. 
Already women value their whole personality accord- 
ing to their love experiences rather than by their life- 
work, and the time may certainly come when men will 
do the same : 

"Woman in her heart values herself — and wishes to 
be valued — according to her love. Not until this is 
fully appreciated and working for happiness does she 
feel her own worth.'' 18 

The full development of love, as of the personality 
generally, demands as complete a recognition of the 
physical as of the psychic side of our nature. Love, 
therefore, is not physical attraction plus friendship, but 
a complete fusion of these two into something utterly 
different from either or from both. The two elements, 
moreover, must be present in the right proportions. 
Not only must the proportions be right, but there must 
be a whole science and art of love, both on the physical 
and the psychical side: 

"Every developed modern woman wishes to be loved 
not en male, but en artiste. Only a man whom she feels 
to possess an artist's joy in her, and who shows this 
joy in discreet and delicate contact with her soul as 
with her body, can retain the love of the modern woman. 
She will belong only to a man who longs for her always, 
even when he holds her in his arms. And when such 
a woman exclaims : 'You desire me, but you cannot 
caress, you cannot listen . . .' then that man is 
doomed." 19 

This means practically that you can never be sure 
that you wholly possess a person or a person's love, 
for there is always more to be had. You should then 



MAN, WOMAN, AND SOCIALISM 335 

always want more and demand more of the other and 
you must always see that the other has more and more 
of you, and if your love is neither undeveloped nor 
exhausted, you will both succeed in always getting more 
of one another. 

This appreciation of the infinite stages of develop- 
ment of love is carried to the point that not only is 
love viewed as fundamentally different in the case of 
every couple — for "life never shows us 'marriage,' but 
countless different marriages; never 'love/ but countless 
lovers" — but as different at every moment of every love: 

"Whenever a woman has captivated a man with a life- 
long fascination, the secret has been that he has never 
exhausted her; that she 'has not been one but a thou- 
sand' (G. Heiberg) ; not a more or less beautiful varia- 
tion on the theme of the female sex, but a music in 
which he has found the wealth of inexhaustibility, the 
enticement of impenetrability, while she has given him 
an incomparable happiness of the senses. The more the 
modern woman acquires courage for a love as rich in 
the senses as in the soul . . . the more will she 
obtain that power which is now only the fortunate ad- 
vantage of the exceptional." 20 

It is an inevitable conclusion from this that it is 
just as possible that a person's capacity to love may 
develop through several relationships as that it may fail 
to develop in a single relationship, however wonderful 
and complete this relationship may have been at the 
beginning. Key acknowledges that a woman who has 
only had a single lover may suffer if her lover has had 
other relations previously, but does not stop at this 
point : 

"But all these sufferings do not bring her to regard 
the beloved as morally sunken, because before her he 
has been the husband of another woman. And the same 



336 THE LARGER ASPECTS OF SOCIALISM 

must hold good of earlier relations of love. The man 
may have developed, through a former marriage or free 
connection, his powers of giving a personal love, or 
he may, in the same way, have lost them. If no baseness 
is connected with these earlier experiences, if he has 
not degraded himself to voluntary division of his erotic 
nature — and bought love is always such a degradation — 
or to contemptible duplicity; if he has not treated any 
woman as a means, but received and given personality, 
then he does not enter 'impure' into his marriage, even 
if he has not evidence of abstinence." 21 

The art of love, then, is not only offered as desir- 
able for all, but it is especially necessary to the woman 
who has only had a single love, for it is only when she 
is an artist in love that such a woman may humanize 
the man who has loved in a mistaken and incomplete 
way before. And indeed it will be only an exceptional 
case where this earlier love has been all that could 
be demanded of it, though the cases will be many 
where there was no actual degradation. Key con- 
tinues : 

"For only by herself loving better will she gradually 
humanize man's passion and liberate it from the blind 
force of the blood." 22 

This passage brings us to the general problem of sexual 
morality, which requires an analysis of man's morality 
as well as that knowledge of women and that apprecia- 
tion of love in which Key is so preeminent. And 
at this point her discussion is inadequate and must be 
supplemented. We cannot agree with her that the sheer 
"force of the blood," which has doubtless accounted for 
many of man's actions in the past, or at least has ac- 
counted for them to a larger measure than it should, is 
necessarily blind to-day. In modern civilized man it is, 



MAN, WOMAN, AND SOCIALISM 337 

on the contrary, to the highest degree cultivated, as Key 
herself recognizes : 

"It is incontestable that premature erotic claims are 
less the result of the needs of the organism than of 
the influence of the imagination upon it. Only a new 
healthiness and beauty in the method of treating erotic 
questions will gradually refashion the now over-excited 
imagination, calm erotic curiosity, and strengthen the 
sense of responsibility towards self and towards the new 
generation so that premature sexual life may lose its 
attraction for the young." 23 

This is undoubtedly the truth. While the sexual 
impulse underlies all it may be reduced to a fraction of 
its former power by methods of control or expanded 
indefinitely by the imagination. It is the very essence 
of Key's position, and that of all the emancipated 
writers, since the age when the few could undertake 
successfully to regulate the lives of the many, that 
control should not be extended too far, but that the 
instincts ought to be developed, expanded, and at the 
same time transformed by the imagination. This will 
apply especially, according to Key's own statements, to 
women— whose sex development is altogether too latent 
until after marriage and sometimes to the end. On 
the other hand, the overwhelming majority of young 
men are undoubtedly overstimulated in many ways, 
especially by certain forms of literature and art. A 
more realistic treatment of woman would make the 
impulse itself more discriminating. There would be 
less feeling for young women generally, including all 
those with even the slightest degree of physical attrac- 
tion, and more feeling for those who, for any reason, 
physical, psychic, or both together, made a special ap- 
peal to the individual. An abstract and generalized 



33^ THE LARGER ASPECTS OF SOCIALISM 

"ideal" has the effect of appealing to the purely 
generalized or physical impulses in man. On the con- 
trary, individualized ideals in literature and art, where 
both sensuous beauty and the rest of reality are given 
an equally free treatment, would have at once a stimu- 
lating and a sobering effect, would lead in the over- 
whelming majority of cases both to self-expression and 
self-control, would concentrate and strengthen the sexual 
impulse when it ought to be irresistible and weaken it 
at other times. 

While the sex side of our natures should be indi- 
vidualized by this true realism or true romance, it should 
also be diffused throughout our whole being by the 
development of all other sides of our selves in their 
naturally intimate relation with sex, and by the corre- 
sponding development of sex in connection with every 
activity in life. Our sex feeling must be narrowed 
(individualized) and intensified in its power to attract 
us to others; it must be broadened and diffused within 
our own personalities. Our physical and mental ac- 
tivities, our esthetic and moral feelings should be per- 
meated with sex throughout, and in turn should lead 
back to sex and develop it; on the other hand our sex 
feeling should always lead out into the rest of our 
lives, and by diffusing itself everywhere cease to be 
a thing apart. We can only have less of sex as an 
obsession, as an essentially physical passion, as a per- 
version of, or an interference with the rest of our life, 
by opening the doors and permeating all of our life 
with sex. 

And if we do consciously develop our sex impulses 
every highly evolved personality will have a new mo- 
tive, as well as new means, for developing more energy 
and more passion in the other sides of life. The de- 
veloped personalities of the future will not allow their 
sex natures to be cramped, crowded out, or crushed, 






MAN, WOMAN, AND SOCIALISM 339 

even by all the rest of life put together, because they 
will realize that the whole of man is involved at every 
moment with his sex development. 

The greatest stimulus insuring the full and harmoni- 
ous development of sex is an equal and coordinated de- 
velopment of man and woman. President G. Stanley 
Hall says of the sexual nature of the present-day 
woman, as compared with the present-day man, that, 
"she became apathetic and slow in sex as he grew pre- 
cipitate because [for the very reason that] she was not 
heated to the degree of fusion." Thus, we have 
a vicious circle, each sex being driven to the oppo- 
site extreme by the other. Hall attributes this dishar- 
mony to the relatively greater interference of will and 
intellect in man in the sexual relationship. This is half 
the truth. The reason why the man's mind and will 
interfere with the normal instinctive union is because they 
have been trained to do so. That is, in will and mind, 
if not in body, man is oversexed. But it is the same 
cause, the interference of will and mind, that brings 
about the apathy in woman, because, by training, she has 
been undersexed, as Key has so ably pointed out. As 
long as the relation is not psychically perfect, it cannot 
be physically perfect, as Hall says. And, until unions 
physically and psychically complete are more common 
than they now are, we can never know how much experi- 
ence is best either for man or woman. All we can say 
now is that man needs more than he now has of one kind 
of experience and less of another, while the case is re- 
versed with woman. Undoubtedly, an excessive develop- 
ment of sex will always be possible, even in relatively 
perfect unions, though at what point we cannot tell. At 
any rate excess is caused in large part to-day by a reac- 
tion from incomplete unions and subnormal sex life, and 
will naturally be lessened in large measure as these unions 
become more perfect. 



34-0 THE LARGER ASPECTS OF SOCIALISM 

But, if unions are to be more complete, and if sex life 
is to be normally developed, the double standard of mor- 
als and education must be revolutionized on the man's 
side also. And there is no reason to suppose that, with 
the aid of the new woman, and the new relation between 
men and women that she is bringing about, there will 
be any insuperable difficulty to accomplishing this — as 
is commonly supposed. This revolution in morals is 
already occurring among the masses of our cities, and 
will doubtless become general in proportion as they con- 
trol. But, first of all, the attitude of our professional 
moralists and of our "official" public opinion must be re- 
versed. 

In trying to bring about a reasonable degree of re- 
straint of the sexual impulse the moralists of the day 
have rightly sought to show the actual cost, the waste, 
and the danger, of promiscuity and excess. But even in 
this practical purpose they have been subject to the vices 
of present-day morality. Influenced by the ethics be- 
queathed to us by the believers in a theological hell, they 
have made the double error of appealing to fear rather 
than to common sense and self-respect, and of grossly 
exaggerating the thing to be feared (disease). Influ- 
enced by our crude materialism, they have supposed that 
the only prudential motive that could be appealed to in 
young men was what might happen to themselves and 
not what might happen to the woman involved. 

The recent sensational discoveries of effective cures of 
the most threatening sexual diseases may be viewed as 
having wreaked poetic justice on this hybrid of Calvin- 
ism and materialism. There is now no further choice, 
and in our customary discussion of this question we will 
be forced to take higher ground. There are no more 
blood-curdling dangers to be faced, but only the psycho- 
logical dangers which have always been of a* far deeper 



MAN, WOMAN, AND SOCIALISM 34-1 

and larger import. Indeed, the physical dangers and 
costs to men promise soon to be reduced to zero. Are 
we to be confined, then, to arguments pointing to the in- 
tellectual waste and aesthetic degeneration involved in 
loose and wild living, together with possible injury to 
the future generation? By no means. 

It is only the criminal and semi-criminal, the exces- 
sively brutal and pathological type of men, that ever 
totally disregard the woman in the case — even with our 
present woefully deficient education on this side of life. 
If it is a commercial relation he enters into, the man tells 
himself that there is no other way the woman can get 
what she needs; if it is a casual affair of the heart, he 
says to himself that the making and breaking of intima- 
cies, or of this particular intimacy, does the woman more 
good than harm. If he has no respect for women gen- 
erally, he knows that even the men of his acquaintance 
demand some plausible reason; if he respects women, he 
requires grounds that would satisfy his sister or his 
women friends. With another kind of education and a 
more frank association of the young of the two sexes, 
there is no reason to suppose that men's consideration for 
women would, as a general rule, lack so much as it does 
now, either in sincerity or in intelligence. 

The question, then, becomes no longer what young 
men may have to fear, but what young women inevitably 
have to suffer. We do not need to suppress a single one 
of the poets' or artists' idealizations of women or of 
physical love, even the most sensuous, provided they have 
artistic merit, but we should add to them a realistic treat- 
ment also, and a scientific familiarity with every physio- 
logical detail of woman's life cycle — and bring about a 
full realization of what her relation to men means. At 
present all this is almost deliberately withheld from 
young men, to such a degree that even the most intelli- 



342 THE LARGER ASPECTS OF SOCIALISM 

gent middle-aged man can scarcely grasp woman's view 
of life. And, worse still, a very considerable proportion 
of women have actually been perverted and robbed of 
their own sound impulses by the influence of such igno- 
rant men — whether ascetics or advocates of "free love." 

Even a better knowledge of the more serious physio- 
logical aspects of the single woman's life would have a 
steadying effect. Still more important is the knowledge 
of the inevitable incidents of marriage and child-bearing. 
But most indispensable of all is the knowledge of the sig- 
nificance to woman's organism of the physiological re- 
lation itself. For even if child birth and gestation are 
cured of all the worst of their terrors, as they well may 
be some day, they remain most momentous in woman's 
life. Even if the physiological effect of an artificial and 
childless life on the special organs is reduced to the min- 
imum, the physiological effect on the nervous system will 
remain of the most colossal import — at least, as impor- 
tant as the effect of celibacy; that is, while there is no 
danger that the individual's life will be ruined or de- 
stroyed either by celibacy or by an unrestrainedly artifi- 
cial mode of living, either of these modes of life is cer- 
tainly utterly different from and markedly inferior to a 
more normal existence, and only if the fuller and more 
natural life is in some way cut off is the individual jus- 
tified in living the life that is next best. 

There can be no question that these are the views of 
our most developed women. Is there any question that 
with a different education and an enlightened public 
opinion, both of which will become practicable in a social 
democratic society, they would become the views of men 
also? Assume for a moment that all young men were 
given something more than a verbal and literary instruc- 
tion, that they were admitted to enough medical clinics 
to demonstrate to them realistically the reverse side of 






MAN, WOMAN, AND SOCIALISM 343 

the poet's and the artist's dream — though this dream is 
also true as far as it goes. Suppose that their lives were 
so full and normal, including their sex life, that they 
never felt tempted to become so intoxicated by al- 
cohol as to forget all their standards of conduct (which 
is the usual cause of their fall), and suppose that men 
and women alike were in an economic situation to form 
serious, long-continued, or permanent unions as soon as 
they felt strongly enough impelled to do so. Would not 
man's consideration for women under these circum- 
stances act as one of the very strongest deterrents, not 
only against promiscuity and excess, but even against 
the very origination of the impulse in an excessive or 
merely physical form? 

While Ellen Key's moral system is somewhat deficient 
as relating to men, it contains very little that is incon- 
sistent with these considerations, and is constructive and 
even creative throughout. For she not only insists on 
love and freedom of action, but she gives new ideas and 
new feelings about what love is, and what it can become, 
besides showing its immeasurable value to society — a 
value that can never be utilized until society gives free- 
dom and real opportunity to every individual. 

Key believes in the right of every individual of "serv- 
ing the community with his love according to his own 
choice, and of using the freedom of his love under his 
own responsibility." And those who do not serve the 
community with love, but, on the contrary, oppose its 
development, she says, are immoral from the standpoint 
of the "religion of life." She refers to Tolstoy as an 
illustration, for however exalted may be his grounds for 
opposition to the full development of love, such opposi- 
tion is the very basis of all immorality : 

"Whether the haters of sexual life belong to the ex- 
hausted or to the excluded, to the sterile or to the im- 



344 THE LARGER ASPECTS OF SOCIALISM 

mature, the withered or the poisoned, they may doubt- 
less be entitled individually to more or less leniency ; their 
doctrine of morality, however, must, for the reasons we 
have given, be rejected as entirely worthless." 24 

Sexual morality, in her view, not only requires unity 
between the sensual and the spiritual sides of life, and 
the development of love in spite of any institutions and 
codes that stand in the way, but also its development 
to the full extent of which the individual is capable. 

I have already spoken of her monistic view of the soul 
and senses. She applies this philosophy to sexual moral- 
ity, not as an apology for the unconventional behavior 
of true lovers, but as a demand upon every individual 
who is capable of true love : 

"The monist in these questions does not ask whether 
a sexual relationship is the first and only one before he 
acknowledges its morality. He only wishes to know 
whether it was such that it did not exclude the personality 
of the lovers ; whether it was a union in which 'neither 
the soul betrayed the senses nor the senses the soul/ In 
these words George Sand gave the idea of the new 
chastity." 25 

Consistently with this view, Key does not fail to de- 
nounce any love relation which is lacking in the full de- 
velopment of the sensual element. Under present con- 
ditions the majority of young men who are fully devel- 
oped on the physical side, she says, have some experi- 
ences before marriage. Those who do not may have 
avoided these experiences from the highest reasons, but 
the chances are far greater that there is some tempera- 
mental coldness or physical limitation in their natures : 

"Thus it is possible in one case out of ten that the love 
for which a young man has kept himself pure until 
marriage really is personal love. In the other nine cases 



MAN, WOMAN, AND SOCIALISM 345 

it is not so, but on the contrary the most impersonal 
of all love." 26 

The love of such a young man, in a word, is likely 
to be impersonal and inferior because lacking on the 
physical side, just as it would be impersonal and in- 
ferior if he had married through an exclusively physical 
attraction. In the one case the love is cold, in the other 
brutal. 

She advocates sexual self-control because she believes 
that it is necessary for the happiness of the individual, 
and incidentally for the happiness of the race. She rec- 
ommends no asceticism, but only a limitation in the use 
of stimulants, more work, more recreation, and more 
art. She is opposed to a too free satisfaction of the 
sexual impulse primarily because it interferes with the 
development of the individual. 

She is especially indignant over the comparison of the 
sex desire with hunger. In fact, she does not favor the 
satisfaction of the sexual impulse for its own sake, but 
only in so far as it enhances life generally. She refuses 
to believe that even the most complete love should be an 
end in itself: 

"It must give life ; if not new living beings then new 
values ; it must enrich the lovers themselves and through 
them mankind." 27 

Obviously there can be no duty to complete love on 
the part of those who are incapable of such love. Key 
does not wish to confine such persons to celibacy, but 
believes that marriage without love may be the best that 
life offers them, and that they have a right, in the ab- 
sence of love, at least to enjoy the lesser benefits of home 
and parenthood. But the new morality does not permit 
to that individual who does embody its principle, and 



346 THE LARGER ASPECTS OF SOCIALISM 

who is capable of personal love, the right to marry or to 
form any sexual union without it : 

"It will be severe with those who, having had ex- 
perience or intuition of love, have entered without it 
into a marriage which will certainly impoverish and 
perhaps ruin more lives than their own." 28 

However, human beings are by no means to be thrown 
into two classes alone. On the contrary, each case is 
individual, and that to a high degree: 

"Only cohabitation can decide the morality of a par- 
ticular case — in other words, its power to enhance the 
life of the individuals who are living together and that 
of the race. Thus sanction can never be granted in 
advance nor — with certain exceptions relating to chil- 
dren — can it be denied to any matrimonial relationship. 
Each fresh couple, whatever form they may choose for 
their cohabitation, must themselves prove its moral 
claim." 29 

In other words, there is no such thing as a sentence 
to be passed by society against the individual before the 
individual has had every opportunity to find out for 
himself what course he will finally choose, and even then 
there is to be no interference of any kind — except where 
something must be done for the children. 

Not only does the new morality demand the most com- 
plete freedom for every individual to develop according 
to his needs, or what he believes to be his needs, but it 
rejects every item of the present-day moral code which 
stands in the way. The individual, according to Key, 
has a right in some cases to love more than once, in 
others to love before marriage, to love without mar- 
riage, and to live for love even before living for chil- 
dren. The only test is whether the love is actually gen- 



MAN, WOMAN, AND SOCIALISM 347 

uine. And she contends that there is an infallible test to 
find out when this is the case : 

"By its fruits love is known. Nothing is truer than 
that 'there is no such thing as local demoralization.' 
A person who in all his other doings is healthy and 
genuine, who continues strong and sound in his work, 
is in most cases moral also in sexual matters according 
to his conscience — even if this does not harmonize with 
the doctrine of monogamy." 30 

As long as this test is followed and the individual is 
developing his whole personality, and therefore proving 
his value to himself and others, love is not only a right, 
but a duty, including the right and duty, whenever a new 
love is greater than the old, to follow this new love. 

Similarly there are many cases where the individual 
will choose to live with another without marriage, and 
Key gives a number of examples of such cases among 
women : 

"There is a gulf, deep as the center of the earth, fixed 
between this unmarried woman, who presents her child 
to the race, and the unmarried woman who 'has a child.' 

"Beyond all doubt the first-named would have con- 
sidered it the ideal of happiness to be able to bring up 
her child together with its father. The circumstances 
which prevent her may be many. The man's liberty, for 
instance, may be limited by earlier duties or feelings 
which bind him against his will or not. The condi- 
tions of life or of work of one of them may prevent 
a complete union. So may the experience that the per- 
sonality of one of them is fettered through marriage. 
Or again, love itself was not what it had promised to 
be, and the woman was proud enough not to consider 
herself fallen and in need of being rehabilitated by a 
marriage which, on the contrary, would under these 
circumstances be a fall. 

"But it may also be for other reasons that a woman 



34^ THE LARGER ASPECTS OF SOCIALISM 

desires a man to keep his complete freedom ; it may be, 
for instance, that he is the younger, or that she knows 
she cannot give him a child." 31 

And finally, in her earnest insistence on the advantage 
of an early and full development of the right kind of sex- 
ual union, Key is willing that young people should unite 
themselves, in some cases, before legal marriage. She 
prefers, where it is practicable, that some marriage form, 
simplified as it will be in the new society, shall be gone 
through with, but she wants the most complete freedom 
of divorce for young people as for others, and feels 
that this right will be widely used. Her plan is a vast 
improvement over the proposed trial marriages. The 
trial marriage looks at the union in a negative sense as 
temporary. Key's early marriage regards the union as 
one that is expected to be permanent, but is qualified by 
an absolute right of divorce. And she expects the widest 
use of this right: 

"It is evident to every thoughtful person that a real 
sexual morality is almost impossible without early mar- 
riage; for simply to refer the young to abstinence as the 
true solution of the problem is, as we have already main- 
tained, a crime against the young and against the race, 
a crime which makes the primitive force of nature, the 
fire of life, into a destructive element. But the con- 
sequence of early marriages must be free divorce. . . . 

"It is known now that, although youthful love may be 
the surest basis of marriage, it is more often the reverse. 
Here, if anywhere, "is the scene of accidents. 

"And it is just those young people who unhesitatingly 
realize their love in the belief of its lifelong continuance, 
that in coercive marriage are made the victims of their 
own pure will, their healthy courage, their bright 
idealism. . . . 

"Nothing is commoner, especially for the woman 






MAN, WOMAN, AND SOCIALISM 349 

whose first experience of love is in marriage, than that 
she is in love with love and not her husband. . . . 

"In other cases again, the husband is all she sees in 
him. But a young woman herself often goes through, 
during the years from twenty to twenty-five, so com- 
plete a transformation of feelings and ways of thought, 
that after a few years of marriage she finds herself 
in the presence of a man who is a perfect stranger to 
her. 

"While love is fighting for its happiness it may trans- 
form an ordinary person into something higher than 
himself, as also into something lower. When the tension 
is relieved it is seen that in the former case — especially 
as regards men — love was able to 

'. . . unmake him from a common man, 
But not complete him to an uncommon one. . . .' 
It was no organic growth of the personality, but only 
a straining of self that love called worth." 32 

Of course a thinker who has so long considered all 
phases of the subject has not failed to give attention to 
the possible children of these early marriages. Every 
form of union and every child is to be considered legiti- 
mate, but the man is to be held strictly responsible for 
fatherhood, and will therefore be to a very great degree 
dependent upon any woman with whom he unites him- 
self: 

"As soon as society decrees that the fact of two per- 
sons becoming parents makes their union obligatory, the 
relationship itself will gradually intensify their feeling 
and the man will wish to preserve and possess the ele- 
ments of joy for which he must always bear the 
burdens." 33 

The word "obligatory" is unfortunate. What Key 
means, it appears from the context, is that the union 
shall be responsible, no matter how brief it may have 



35° THE LARGER ASPECTS OF SOCIALISM 

been. All children are to be legitimate, as they are al- 
ready becoming under the laws of several countries, but 
the mother is to have the right to demand that the father 
shall share the responsibility. It is not proposed, as the 
word "obligatory" might suggest, to use any pressure 
to make the union more permanent than it would other- 
wise be, not even for the sake of the children, for, ac- 
cording to Key's view, all pressure that is brought to 
bear on the parents in behalf of the children is nothing 
less than an injury to the latter. She prefers rather that 
the two individuals concerned should each find another 
union which satisfies them, so that at least the children 
to be born later may receive what is more valuable than 
all else — namely, parents who are in love with one an- 
other. According to this idea, it is absolutely immoral 
for parents to live primarily for their children : 

"The children begotten under a sense of duty would 
moreover be deprived of a number of essential condi- 
tions of life ; among others that of finding in their parents 
beings full of life and radiating happiness, which con- 
stitutes the chief spiritual nourishment of children— and 
it may be added that parents 'who live entirely for their 
children' are seldom good company for them." 34 

That is, to live for the children means to deprive the 
children of parents who really love one- another. 

Key does not object to the restriction of the number 
of children in certain specified cases, but she objects 
to the motives under which restriction is often resorted 
to: 

"To the evolutionist only the cause, not the manner, is 
the deciding point. Danger to the possible children or 
to the mother herself ; the fear of pecuniary or personal 
insufficiency for the bringing up of the children; the de- 
sire of using all one's powers and resources for an im- 



MAN, WOMAN, AND SOCIALISM 35 1 

portant life work ; a Malthusian point of view in the ques- 
tion of population — these and other motives are regarded 
by the evolutionist as good reasons for limiting or alto- 
gether abstaining from parentage." 35 

In this last paragraph we begin to see the serious ef- 
fect of Key's chief limitation, namely, her failure to take 
into account the vast possibilities of economic evolution 
and social revolution, without which, as she admits, no 
very great advance is possible along any of the lines she 
proposes. 

With the new economic system Key herself advocates 
surely all these Malthusian considerations and most of 
the pecuniary grounds for restriction would pass away. 
And with these artificial grounds for restriction would 
go also those authoritarian preachings against restriction 
that formerly forbade any measures whatever in this 
direction. Yet she says : 

"When only petty and selfish reasons — such as con- 
siderations of the children's inheritance, personal good- 
living and voluptuousness, beauty and comfort — deter- 
mine fathers and mothers to keep the number of their 
children below the average required to secure the due 
increase of population, then their conduct is anti-social. 
A person, on the other hand, who is content with few 
or no children, because he or she has a work to perform, 
may be able to compensate society by the production of 
another class of value." (My italics.) 36 

We have here an admission of the superior claim of 
society against the individual which is in absolute and 
astounding • contradiction to Key's whole system of 
thought, for, according to everything I have quoted up 
to this point, society has no right to demand any act 
from the individual, except such as develop the indi- 
vidual himself. To explain this extraordinary lapse we 



35 2 THE LARGER ASPECTS OF SOCIALISM 

have to realize that Key does not consider any revolu- 
tionary change in the home as possible. Until there is 
such a change, we must admit that a woman must either 
have servants, which merely puts off these tasks on other 
women, or she must carry practically all the present bur- 
dens of the home and child-rearing herself. This is the 
condition that Key regards as permanent. 

This opinion leads Key, in the question of attending 
to the home and the rearing of children, to use two argu- 
ments which are entirely inconsistent with her whole 
process of reasoning. First, she tries to keep the woman 
to these tasks by telling her of the duty she owes to 
society, and, secondly, she suggests that when a woman 
wishes to undertake other activities at the same time 
with these domestic ones, this is due merely to a desire 
"to devote her purely human qualities to other tasks." I 
have pointed out how the first error contradicts Key's 
own philosophy. The second contradicts her demand 
for a full development for every human being. A mar- 
ried woman may wish to devote part of her energy in 
some measure or even largely to other tasks in order 
to develop herself, and thus incidentally to do the thing 
that is best for her children, who are so largely depend- 
ent on her development. It is perfectly natural that Key, 
seeing no solution of the problem as to who is to take 
care of the children and the home, should be driven 
back into a reactionary and illogical position. For if 
the choice had to be made between purely domestic 
functions and outside activities that involved the neglect 
of children, of course no real mother would hesitate. 

Here is the way Key refers to the woman who devotes 
herself to other than home tasks : 

"When, in order thus to be able to 'live their life/ 
they wish to be 'freed from the burden of the child,' 
one begins to doubt. For until automatic nurses have 



MAN, WOMAN, AND SOCIALISM 353 

been invented, or male volunteers have offered them- 
selves, the burden must fall upon other women, who — 
whether themselves mothers or not — are thus obliged 
to bear a double one. Real liberation for women is thus 
impossible; the only thing possible is a new division of 
the burdens. 

"Those already 'freed' declare that by making money, 
studying, writing, taking part in politics, they feel them- 
selves leading a higher existence with greater emotions 
than the nursery could have afforded them. They look 
down upon the 'passive' function of bearing children — 
and rightly, when it remains only passive — without per- 
ceiving that it embodies as nothing else does the possi- 
bility of putting their whole personality in activity. 
Every human being has the right to choose his own 
happiness — or unhappiness. 

"But what these women have no right to, is to be 
considered equally worthy of the respect of society with 
those who find their highest emotions through their chil- 
dren, the beings who not only form the finest subject 
for human art, but are at the same time the only work 
by which the immortality of its creator is assured." 37 

It is true that the problem of rearing children without 
a monstrous cost to the mother has not yet been solved, 
but far from making us turn away from the problem 
this failure should only make us give it all the more at- 
tention. While the mother must be supreme in raising 
the child, an infinity of possible aids with which economic 
and social evolution may provide her will suggest them- 
selves to any thoughtful person, especially to anyone 
who has observed the tremendous changes now going on 
in the home aside from this child-rearing aspect. 

It is true, as Key says, that the woman must not only 
have the child, but rear it, in order to develop her whole 
personality, but it does not follow that she may not be 
provided, in the course of evolution, with innumerable 



354 THE LARGER ASPECTS OF SOCIALISM 

aids to efficient child-rearing, which are now lacking. 
And certainly it is a strange thing for Key to say that 
the home and child-rearing in themselves give women the 
possibility "of putting their whole personality into activ- 
ity," a statement which is contradicted by nearly every 
page she has written. In a word, Key has a vast faith 
in the possibilities of individual evolution, but a very nar- 
rowly limited faith in the possibilities of the evolution of 
social and economic institutions — even though she is a 
Socialist in all her ultimate ideals. 

Mrs. Gilman may be wrong in her opposite assumption 
that the home is disintegrating so rapidly, and school edu- 
cation developing so rapidly, that there is practically no 
woman question and no home problem at all, aside from 
the economic one of hastening this evolution — but cer- 
tainly she is right in that at present it is along these lines 
that we must look chiefly for progress. 

And Olive Schreiner is surely justified in claiming that 
the woman who is developed exclusively through chil- 
dren and the home, unless she has become a specialist 
and an expert in this particular line, is unfit either as a 
comrade of man or as a mother of children : 

"It is our faith that the day comes in which not only 
shall no man dare to say, 'It is enough portion for a 
woman in life that she bear a child,' but when it will 
rather be said, 'What noble labor has that woman per- 
formed that she should have the privilege of bringing 
a man or woman child into the world ?' " 38 

Key by no means wishes to confine any woman during 
her whole life to her home, but only during the rela- 
tively few years when her children are very young. 
These years, however, are necessarily taken from the 
prime of her life. 

Key develops at great length "the tragic situation" that 
calls the woman to serve her children and at the same 



MAN, WOMAN, AND SOCIALISM 355 

time to develop her own personality. This is what might 
be called a social dualism, in conflict with her own monis- 
tic philosophy. It is true that the problem may only be 
solved by time, but so will all the other questions with 
which she is concerned. Some of her passages might 
even suggest that she scarcely believes in economic evolu- 
tion at all, as, for example, the following, where she 
fails completely to take into account the fact that the 
conditions of the home and child-rearing have ceaselessly 
evolved and are even undergoing a revolution at the 
present time. She assumes that the normal family will 
consist of not less than three or four children (we may 
agree with this, but neither should it, as a rule, consist in 
more than that number) : 

"But in this case a mother must reckon that her chil- 
dren will occupy about ten years of her life, if she will 
herself give them the nursing and care which will make 
them fully efficient. And during these years — if her 
contribution in either direction is to have its full value — 
she must neither divide her powers by working for a 
living nor by constant public activity. During these 
years she may continue her own general development ; 
she may take occasional part in social work; now and 
then she may have time for mental production. But 
any continuous and exhausting work outside the home 
will, at least indirectly, diminish her own vital force and 
that of her children." 39 

Not only is Key dualistic in this matter and oblivious 
to the past advances and future possibilities of economic 
evolution, but she practically identifies the family with 
the home. The evolution of the family is a much 
broader problem, and would take us far afield. The 
family is certainly here to stay with us for a long time, 
but it is in no way tied to the home. She points out 
that the children need family affection and care and 



356 THE LARGER ASPECTS OF SOCIALISM 

wastes eloquence on the proposition, for very few would 
agree with the opposite teaching of certain "State Social- 
ists" that institutions will do all of this work better — 
though every thoughtful person will agree that institu- 
tions may render tremendous aid. She reminds us that 
institutions cannot furnish love, which must be strictly 
individual, and that what is needed is more family affec- 
tion than we can have to-day, under conditions which 
permit parents and their children to see no more of one 
another than the poverty of the majority now allows. 

All of this is obviously true, but it does not justify 
Key's identifying the need of every individual to "find 
himself at home in a single poor heart" with the need 
of finding himself at home in one poor corner of the 
world. Key herself admits that family conditions will 
change enormously, and that an increase of institutions 
of all kinds will be inevitable. She favors also a subsidy 
to mothers for the bringing up of children, and finally 
even makes a full admission of the possibility of eco- 
nomic evolution in the home itself, which she had practi- 
cally denied by implication before. And tne evolution 
of the home can only mean either that it will be pro- 
foundly modified and given a collective form, or that its 
functions will be more and more restricted as far as it 
retains its present individualistic state. 

Even now we have not penetrated to the bottom of 
Key's error in consigning the overwhelming majority of 
women exclusively to home and child-rearing during a 
considerable period at the prime of their lives. The 
question is this: If Ellen Key is a Socialist and admits 
economic evolution, why does she take this conservative 
position? It is inconceivable that the error could be 
merely intellectual. What is the quality of the Socialism 
upon which this error is based? 

Sometimes Key's Socialism is complete. In regard to 



MAN, WOMAN, AND SOCIALISM 357 

the right of every child to an equal opportunity for ex- 
ample, no Socialist could add anything to her views : 

"The prevailing system of society has prompted fa- 
thers still more to enslave themselves in order to create 
an advantageous position for their children. The exist- 
ing rights and duties of a father stand in immediate con- 
nection with the right of inheritance, one of the greatest 
dangers of our system of society. For inheritance often 
keeps inefficiency in a leading position, but efficiency in 
a dependent one; it favors the possibility of the de- 
generate propagating the race. . . . 

"The goad of acquisitiveness would be broken through 
the limited possibility of increasing one's wealth and the 
needlessness of thereby securing the existence of one's 
children. A new system would do away with the neces- 
sity of applying to the state for increase of salary for 
the education of children as befits their class. For if 
all children were placed in an equal position by the 
community providing everything — from school materials 
to traveling scholarships — for the complete education of 
the bodily and mental powers of individuals, an educa- 
tion in which a true circulation of the classes would take 
place by consideration being given only to ability; if 
each thus had the same position when all entered upon 
their different careers; if each had the same chances of 
there attaining to the right use of his special powers, 
since he had every means of training them. . . . 
then the desire to favor one's own children at the cost 
of the rest would disappear. 

"The father whose activity had procured him a posi- 
tion of power, which during his lifetime made his chil- 
dren's circumstances more favorable than those of a 
number of others, would certainly thus be able — and to 
the advantage of the whole community — to allow his 
children that differentiation and refinement which, for 
instance, the richer culture of their home might give. 
But when the right of inheritance disappeared — or at 



35& THE LARGER ASPECTS OF SOCIALISM 

least was greatly limited and heavily taxed — he could 
not exempt them from permanently securing by the ex- 
ercise of their own powers the advantages of a higher 
or lower kind that they had learned to value at home." 40 

Here is the revolutionary Socialist ideal intact. 

Again, when we look at Key's conception of history, 
we find certain modifications of the usual Socialist view, 
but not any deformation : 

"All thinking persons desire new conditions with 
growing earnestness. But new conditions do not arise, 
as the Socialist is far too willing to believe, through new 
external relations alone ; nor through new ideas and dis- 
coveries, as the man of science with his bias is too apt 
to think. New conditions arise above all through new 
human beings, new souls, new emotions. Only these 
form new plans of life, new modes of action; only these 
revalue the objects which are then pursued day by day 
by innumerable individuals. A new idea becomes feel- 
ing and motive power, at first with one individual, then 
with a few, then with many, and finally with all." 41 

This is merely the pragmatic modification of the So- 
cialist formula. But we find that, even with the Social- 
ist conception of history and the revolutionary Socialist 
ideal, Key is still a believer to a considerable degree in 
"State Socialism." She believes, for example, that if 
society provided for the workers as a right, not as a 
charity, "then the desire to favor one's own children at 
the cost of the rest would disappear," along with the 
fear that one's own children would suffer. This is pure 
Utopianism, unmodified by the facts of human nature, 
which show men and women ready, where unequal con- 
ditions exist, to do almost anything to give their children 
an unfair advantage over others. 

Key admits the domination of society by financial in- 
terests and the necessity for the working class fo struggle 



359 

against this domination, but she addresses herself pri- 
marily to the conscience of the educated persons among 
the upper and upper middle classes. She expects social 
advance to be very slow, since it is to be made by an ap- 
peal to "private conscience and collective conscience." 
She attributes the backwardness of culture to general stu- 
pidity and not to class rule, and in the very passage where 
she attacks the financial interests she refers also to the 
"inevitable self-surrender on the part of the best and the 
unconditional self-satisfaction on the part of the others." 
In a word, she represents that halfway position between 
revolutionary Socialism and Utopian "State Socialism," 
which is so common among upper class women to-day. 

But the value of the rest of Key's work is by no means 
impaired throughout by this error, colossal and funda- 
mental as it is. It is evident, for example, that she 
reaches her conclusions concerning the necessity of sex 
expression, as on other matters, not through her idea 
that the home is permanent and that women can- 
not carry on any other function while they are rearing 
their children, but on the basis of other principles I have 
outlined, and, above all, on the immeasurable importance 
of love. 

There is little question that Key's views correspond to 
those of the overwhelming majority of educated and 
serious women who have given thought to these ques- 
tions. The ideas of Olive Schreiner, for example, do 
not differ fundamentally, though they are somewhat less 
developed. With Schreiner, too, love comes first of all, 
and this is because of the esthetic, intellectual, and spir- 
itual functions of love apart entirely from the instinct of 
physical reproduction. She believes that the love and 
sexual feelings of the future will not be less, but greater 
than they are to-day, and agrees that they will probably 
be concentrated upon fewer persons of the other sex, 



360 THE LARGER ASPECTS OF SOCIALISM 

and at the same time more intense when they are so 
centered. When Schreiner says that the sexes are mov- 
ing together instead of moving apart, she means that 
the relation of man to woman is destined to play a more 
and more important role in society. And one of her chief 
purposes is to show that the new woman will be more 
lovable and will attract men even more strongly than the 
old. The facts that she will enter upon more fields of 
labor, that she will be "freer, more intellectual and more 
virile," she believes, will only serve to vastly intensify 
and develop sexual attraction. 

Indeed, the present separation of the sexes, according 
to Schreiner, and in accord also with common observa- 
tion, is due chiefly to a separation of occupation. As 
woman gives a smaller and smaller part of her time to 
the home, and less time, though more thought, to chil- 
dren, she will enter even more rapidly into new fields of 
labor than she is doing now. This tendency, indeed, is 
opposed even to-day not so much by retrogressive men 
as by retrogressive women, who cannot visualize or adapt 
themselves to the new life. 

Not only will these new conditions increase vastly the 
amount of love in the world, and so vitalize and intensify 
all life, but they will have an immediately beneficial effect 
on sexual selection and the improvement of the race. 
The ruling class males of to-day who purchase women 
for marriage or otherwise have often "made" their 
own money, but this by no means shows any superior 
capacity for parenthood, and these will be reduced to 
compete for women like other men. And similarly 
those women of all classes, from the conventional 
bought wife to the prostitute, who live as willing 
parasites on these men, will have a smaller chance than 
to-day to pick out desirable male mates and to propagate 
the species. Men will not be attracted to suoh types of 



MAN, WOMAN, AND SOCIALISM 361 

women when, in order to maintain them, they are obliged 
to suffer some real loss, instead of shifting the expense 
on the subjected classes of society whom they exploit. 
There will be more women of the desirable kind for 
most men and less women of the undesirable kind for 
the beast of prey type of man. There will be more men, 
and of the right kind, for the new woman and far less 
for the parasite. 

Schreiner's chief contributions lie in her insistence on 
the necessity of comradeship between the sexes, and of 
common occupations, and in her denunciation of para- 
sitism, which not only leads away from comradeship, 
but also brings about degeneration of the minority who 
are placed in the position of parasites and a correspond- 
ing exploitation of the majority. Schreiner, like Mrs. 
Gilman, is an economic Socialist. In morality and ideals 
they could not be more Socialistic than Ellen Key, but 
both are more concerned with the more immediate and 
practical phase of the "woman question," namely its eco- 
nomic aspect. Ellen Key goes far more deeply than 
they do into questions that might remain, in very large 
part, even after the solution of the economic problem; 
but her failure wholly to grasp this problem has led her 
into exceedingly grave errors as to present-day life. 

Strange to say, the too great emphasis on the possi- 
bilities that lie in economic changes alone, which we find 
in the case of Olive Schreiner, Mrs. Gilman, and others, 
is due to precisely the same political faith that brings 
Ellen Key to neglect economic progress. All are inter- 
ested in reforms that appeal to the "private and collec- 
tive conscience," and unconsciously shape their philoso- 
phy so that it may appeal to some element of the ruling 
class. 

Schreiner says : 

"Give us labor and the training which fits for labor! 



362 THE LARGER ASPECTS OF SOCIALISM 

We demand this, not for ourselves alone, but for the 



On the contrary, what is demanded by the masses 
of women is not more labor, but more life, a truth 
which Schreiner herself sees at times; for example, when 
she demands that women should have their place as 
"guiders, controllers, possessors." But she constantly 
reverts to the upper-class view, and is far more con- 
cerned for the ten per cent who constitute the upper 
and middle classes than she is for the other ninety per 
cent — whose interests she does not ignore, but constantly 
puts in a secondary position. 

Schreiner is disturbed chiefly by the parasitism of 
the upper class women on the males of that class. She 
practically admits that the males are also parasites on 
society as a whole, but this fact becomes of entirely sec- 
ondary importance in her reasoning. She admits that it 
is only class rule and exploitation and the existence of 
wage slaves that make the female parasite of the upper 
class possible: 

"Under no conditions, at no time, in no place, in the 
history of the world have the males of any period, of 
any nation, of any class, shown the slightest inclination 
to allow their own females to become inactive or para- 
sitic, so long as the actual muscular labor of feeding and 
clothing them would in that case have devolved upon 
themselves! 

"Without slaves or subject classes to perform the 
crude physical labors of life and produce superfluous 
wealth, the parasitism of the female would, in the past, 
have been an impossibility." 43 

But, strange to relate, after these admissions she ex- 
presses the fear that the women of the workmg classes 



MAN, WOMAN, AND SOCIALISM 363 

themselves will, within a period of fifty years, become 
parasites in a somewhat similar way : 

"The ancient forms of female, domestic, physical la- 
bor of even the women of the poorest classes will be little 
required, their place being taken, not by other females, 
but by always increasingly perfected labor-saving ma- 
chinery." 44 

Her description of the upper-class female parasite is 
scathing, but it seems to be due far more to her regret 
that the upper class woman does not labor and is there- 
fore degenerating than to her indignation that this 
woman lives on the backs of the masses : 

"Then, in place of the active laboring woman, up- 
holding society by her toil, has come the effete wife, con- 
cubine or prostitute, clad in fine raiment, the work of 
others' fingers; fed on luxurious viands, the result of 
others' toil, waited on and tended by the labor of 
others. . . . 

"Finely clad, tenderly housed, life became for her 
merely the gratification of her own physical and sexual 
appetites, and the appetites of the male, through the 
stimulation of which she could maintain herself. And, 
whether as kept wife, kept mistress, or prostitute, she 
contributed nothing to the active and sustaining labors of 
her society. She had attained to the full development of 
that type which, whether in modern Paris or New York 
or London, or in ancient Greece, Assyria or Rome, is 
essentially one in its features and its results. She was 
the 'fine lady,' the human female parasite — the most 
deadly microbe which can make its appearance on the 
surface of any social organism. The relation of female 
parasitism generally to the peculiar phenomenon of pros- 
titution is fundamental. Prostitution can never be ade- 
quately dealt with, either from the moral or the scien- 
tific standpoint, unless its relation to the general phenom- 
enon of female parasitism be fully recognized. It is the 



364 THE LARGER ASPECTS OF SOCIALISM 

failure to do this which leaves so painful a sense of 
abortion on the mind, after listening to most modern 
utterances on the question, whether made from the emo- 
tional platform of the moral reformer, or the intellect- 
ual platform of the would-be scientist." 45 

It does not seem to have occurred to Schreiner that 
perhaps society could be best advanced by the decay and 
disappearance of these upper class women and their de- 
scendants, rather than by their regeneration to become 
more effective exploiters and perhaps to build up a last- 
ing caste system. This confusion of thought leads to 
many other strange confusions, which, however, are typ- 
ical of the thinking of many middle-class radical women. 
It is supposed, for example, that the fact that the wealth 
is unearned in itself leads to degeneration, though dif- 
ferent amounts are required to bring about this effect 
according to individual characters. Yet Schreiner has 
pointed out that the men of the same class do not degen- 
erate to such a degree, though their wealth is equally un- 
earned according to her own standpoint. It is evidently 
a lack of activity, and not consumption of wealth, that 
leads to degeneration. 

Again Schreiner speaks of the lack of incentive to 
exertion as being another cause of degeneration, whereas 
the truth is that it is only a lack of experience of reality 
and of actual exertion, from whatever motive, which is 
at fault. The men of the exploiting class have no more 
economic incentive to work than the women, but they 
have other motives that keep them in contact with real- 
ity — the love of excitement, the love of power. 

Moreover, Schreiner states repeatedly that a healthy 
condition requires not only the rearing of children, but 
also other labor, yet the moment she becomes affected by 
the degeneration of her upper-class parasites she forgets 
this and demands only that they should attend to the 



MAN, WOMAN, AND SOCIALISM 365 

rearing of their children. Undoubtedly this would im- 
prove them and their children, but it is difficult to see 
how it would put an end to the parasitism or the degen- 
eration it brings about. 

The case of Olive Schreiner shows that it is almost 
impossible to expect a woman who writes for upper- 
class readers to maintain the Socialist point of view, even 
after she has mastered it. The upper class woman is 
certainly a burden and a disgrace to our civilization, as 
Schreiner says, but the disgrace lies not in the fact that 
she does not work or rear her own children, but that she 
is a parasite on the community and therefore on other 
people's children. The trouble is not that she fails to be 
an active exploiter like her husband, but that she keeps 
a vast army of women and of men at work for her as 
servants or as workers engaged in producing the luxur- 
ies she consumes. 

Mrs. Gilman also appeals primarily to the upper classes. 
But her contributions on the question of the economic 
evolution of woman and of society, especially in so far 
as it relates to woman, are of the utmost value, com- 
parable only to what Ellen Key has written on love and 
marriage. Her "Woman and Economics" and her work 
on "The Home" have shown both what society has suf- 
fered and is suffering by the economic backwardness of 
woman and the home, and what vast possibilities are 
offered by future economic evolution.* 

Like the other writers of the day, Mrs. Gilman is 

* I am dealing rather briefly with Mrs. Gilman's work in this 
connection, though I have quoted her at length in other chapters. Cer- 
tainly no woman writer has made more influential contributions to 
modern social philosophy. But I consider her work far more im- 
portant in the general field of sociology than in the discussion of 
sex, marriage, love, and other specific aspects of the woman ques- 
tion — important as her achievement is in these matters also. 



366 THE LARGER ASPECTS OF SOCIALISM 

wedded to "evolutionism," and frequently reaches con- 
clusions not only based on the experiences of man in 
the remote past, but even on the life of insects and uni- 
cellular organisms. She says, for example, that, for a 
few centuries or so, men need not object to the criticism 
she has made of them, implying that the readjustment 
she speaks of will not be made within a lesser period, 
though even her own discussion of impending changes 
might lead the reader to a far more hopeful view. But 
in spite of this, her thinking is pragmatic almost at 
every point. Where she does not consciously guide her- 
self by the needs of our time, she does so uncon- 
sciously. 

Mrs. Gilman's fundamental defect, as I have said, is 
her unwillingness to admit that an appeal to "private 
conscience and collective conscience" is insufficient unless 
accompanied by a struggle to abolish class rule, with or 
without the consent of the ruling classes. 

For example, she refers to ethics as a science at once 
"simple and practical." This is not only the opposite to 
the pragmatic view, but it gives opportunity to the ruling 
class of to-day or to-morrow to say what the conclu- 
sions of such ethics shall be. It is the dogmatic spirit 
which has guided all tyrannies and will undoubtedly 
guide the tyranny of "State Socialism." 

The ideal of the common welfare seems to her a 
relatively simple matter that all normal persons should 
admit, and if we do not she attributes our backward- 
ness, not to class government or class interest but to 
masculine government or to the stupidity of society 
generally : 

"It is the old masculine spirit of government as au- 
thority which is so slow in adopting itself to the demo- 
cratic idea of government as service. That it should be 
a representative government they grasp, but representa- 



MAN, WOMAN, AND SOCIALISM 367 

tive of what? of the common will, they say; the will of 
the majority — never thinking that it is the common good, 
the common welfare, that government should represent. 
It is the inextricable masculinity in our idea of govern- 
ment which so revolts at the idea of women as voters. 
'To govern:' that means to boss, to control, to have 
authority, and that only, to most minds." 4G 

Mrs. Gilman does not seem to realize that the women 
of the ruling class have now and doubtless will continue 
to have the same ideal of government as the men — 
though their treatment of servants might surely have 
suggested as much. The present transition from pri- 
vate capitalism to state capitalism she seems to regard 
as a transition from masculine to human rule, while she 
appears to take it for granted that, in proportion as gov- 
ernments' functions increase, governments will serve 
society. She accepts the Socialist ideal, but also, ap- 
parently without criticism, the present capitalistic re- 
forms which are leading first of all not to Socialism, 
but to "State Socialism" : 

"In this change of systems a government which con- 
sists only of prohibition and commands, of tax collecting 
and making war, is rapidly giving way to a system which 
intelligently manages our common interests, which is a 
growing and improving method of universal service. 
Here the Socialist is perfectly right in his vision of the 
economic welfare to be assured by the socialization of in- 
dustry, though that is but part of the new develop- 
ment." 47 

And finally, Mrs. Gilman attributes our backwardness 
primarily not to the government of society in the interest 
of a single class, but to mere stupidity and old methods 
of education: 

"We are beginning to learn a little of the nature of 
humanity; its goodness, its beauty, its lovingness; and 



368 THE LARGER ASPECTS OF SOCIALISM 

to see that even its stupidity is only due to our foolish 
old methods of education." 48 

According to this view, all that is necessary in order 
to institute a new system is to educate the masses and 
the upper classes alike. It is natural that one who has 
such an implicit confidence in government and in all so- 
cial classes should feel free to invent all imaginable forms 
of institutional improvement. Undoubtedly the larger 
part of Mrs. Gilman's proposals, which are legion, would 
prove entirely practicable at one or another stage of so- 
cial advance, but she fails to distinguish between those 
which can be and will be used for the maintenance of the 
present class rule and parasitism and those which will 
be applied only by a Socialist society. She fails, more- 
over, not only to see that some of these institutional 
changes cannot be introduced until class rule is abol- 
ished, but that some of them if applied before that time 
and by capitalists would actually prove despotic, reaction- 
ary to the last degree. She thus fully justifies many of 
the attacks and criticisms that have been made by Ellen 
Key and others. Her deficiencies, however, by no means 
destroy the enormous value of Mrs. Gilman's work in 
pointing out that in the home and the rearing of chil- 
dren precisely similar and equally great revolutions are 
to be expected, and are already beginning to take place, 
as have already occurred in industry. 

But Mrs. Gilman, proceeding in precisely the contrary 
direction from Ellen Key, goes to the opposite extreme, 
and is inclined to disregard the home entirely, in the be- 
lief that it will ultimately disappear, and with it the 
present problem of child-rearing. She has an excellent 
Socialist precedent for this view in the opinion of Marx's 
collaborator, Frederick Engels, who believed that the dis- 
appearance of the home would also revolutionize the 



MAN, WOMAN, AND SOCIALISM 369 

family and the relation between the sexes and wrote, in 
"The Origin of the Family" : 

"With the transformation of the means of production 
into collective property the monogamous family ceases 
to be the economic unit of society. The private house- 
hold changes to a social industry. The care and edu- 
cation of the children becomes a public matter. Society 
cares equally well for all children, legal or illegal. This 
removes the care about the consequences which now 
forms the essential factor — moral and economic — hin- 
dering a girl from surrendering unconditionally to the 
beloved man. Will not this be sufficient cause for a 
gradual rise of a more unconventional intercourse of the 
sexes and a more lenient opinion regarding virgin honor 
and female shame?" 

But whatever the ultimate transformation of the 
home, the change is not at present toward state institu- 
tions or their sequels, as suggested by Engels, but 
rather toward the collective home, with its equally rev- 
olutionary but widely different effects. 

The possibility that the home will gradually cease to 
be individual and become collective has been ably stated 
by Montessori, who reasons on the basis of her own ex- 
periments : 

"The 'Children's House' is the first step toward the 
socialisation of the home. The inmates find under their 
own roof the convenience of being able to leave their 
little ones in a place, not only safe, but where they have 
every advantage. . . . 

"We are all familiar with the ordinary advantages of 
the communistic transformation of the general environ- 
ment. For example the collective use of railway car- 
riages, of street lights, of the telephone, all these are 
great advantages. The enormous production of useful 



370 THE LARGER ASPECTS OF SOCIALISM 

articles, brought about by industrial progress, makes pos- 
sible to all clean clothes, carpets, curtains, table-deli- 
cacies, better table-ware, etc. The making of such bene- 
fits generally tends to level social caste. All this we 
have seen in its realization. But the communising of 
persons is new. That the collectivity shall benefit from 
the services of the servant, the nurse, the teacher — this 
is a modern ideal. 

"We have in the 'Children's Houses' a demonstration 
of this ideal which is unique in Italy or elsewhere. Its 
significance is most profound, for it corresponds to a 
need of the times. We can no longer say that the 
convenience of leaving their children takes away from 
the mother a natural social duty of first importance; 
namely, that of caring for and educating her tender 
offspring. No, for to-day the social and economic evolu- 
tion calls the workingwoman to take her place among 
wage-earners, and takes away from her by force those 
duties which would be most dear to her! The mother 
must, in any event, leave her child, and often with the 
pain of knowing it to be abandoned. The advantages 
furnished by such institutions are not limited to the 
laboring classes, but extend also to the general middle 
class, many of whom work with the brain. Teachers, 
professors, often obliged to give private lessons after 
school hours, frequently leave their children to the care 
of some rough and ignorant maid-of-all-work. Indeed, 
the first announcement of the 'Children's House' was 
followed by a deluge of letters from persons of the bet- 
ter class demanding that these helpful reforms be ex- 
tended to their dwellings. 

"We are, then, communising a 'maternal function' a 
feminine duty, within the home. We may see here in 
this practical act the solving of many of woman's prob- 
lems which have seemed to many impossible of solution. 
What then will become of the home, one asks, if the 
woman goes away from it? The home will be trans- 
formed and will assume the functions of the woman. 



MAN, WOMAN, AND SOCIALISM 371 

"I believe that in the future of society other forms of 
communistic life will come." 49 

With the progress toward communistic life along these 
lines, the majority of the defences of the older sexual 
morality and marriage institutions will disappear, and 
here we come to the heart of the woman question. 

The citadel of all reactionary and conservative ideas 
as to woman is the home, not the "home" of the working 
woman, but the home of the upper classes with servants 
and nurses to do the work. As servants become more 
and more expensive and tend altogether to disappear and 
as collective homes are at the same time made more feasi- 
ble, the old individual home will find a dwindling number 
of defenders, and with it the whole of the old system 
will go, not only the old attitude to woman and her life, 
but also the old individualism which grew up around the 
isolated family and the home. 

This liberation from the tyranny of the home will per- 
mit the freedom for love of which Ellen Key speaks, and 
will bring men and women together in their work as 
Olive Schreiner desires. 

As men and women are brought together in their work 
our admiration for the able and unscrupulous men of 
business and politics will disappear, along with our ad- 
miration for family egoism and our worship of the mere 
mother and the mere wife. Already financier, lawyer, 
statesman and diplomat are becoming terms of ridicule 
or even of reproach, together with the German word 
"hausfrau," while we are getting to have the same feel- 
ings with regard to the notorious sentence of the Kaiser 
that women should be confined to "children, clothes, 
kitchen and church." And so with everything that is dis- 
tinctively masculine, as well as everything that is distinc- 
tively feminine, under our present artificial relationships. 
Whatever the new masculine and feminine qualities will 



$J2 THE LARGER ASPECTS OF SOCIALISM 

be, sports, heavy drinking, cynical talking and vile stories 
will no longer appeal to men, just as sentimental ro- 
mance, mere prettiness, timidity and softness will no 
longer appeal to women. Man's cynicism will go along 
with woman's hypocrisy, and it will be seen that life is 
neither a battle for mere survival or for power over 
others, as most men now hold, nor merely an amiable 
experiment in cooperative living, as is held by Key, Gil- 
man, Schreiner and the overwhelming majority of all 
those middle-class women, who feel that a successful 
appeal can be made to the conscience of the ruling classes 
to surrender their privileges and power. 



APPENDIX A 

SOCIALISM AND PRAGMATISM AS SEEN IN THE 
WRITINGS OF MARX AND ENGELS 

How does it happen that the modern Socialist philosophy 
did not come from the Socialist movement. I do not mean 
to imply that we should expect all the elements of So- 
cialist thought and all the features of a Socialist society to 
come from the Socialist movement, for my main contention 
is that Socialism is constantly assimilating new elements 
from all quarters, and it is just as significant if science and 
philosophy evolve toward Socialism as it would be if Social- 
ism itself should produce the scientific philosophy. What 
I mean is that, since Marx and Engels made a decided 
beginning in the direction of pragmatism more than half 
a century ago, we might have expected that the Socialist 
movement would also produce the socially radical phil- 
osophy of the present day. 

But we have only to apply the Socialist conception of 
history and society to philosophy to see that the formula- 
tions of Marx and Engels, even in the Socialist view, must 
necessarily have been so limited by the science and the 
society of their day as to make them unavailable in a twen- 
tieth century philosophy and society. The chief formula- 
tions of modern Socialism were written from 1848 to 1875, 
a full generation before the first appearance of present 
day pragmatism. In spite of this Marx and Engels un- 
doubtedly had a firm grasp of some of the chief elements 
of the new philosophy; broadly speaking they were prag- 
matists, but they missed some of the most basic and es- 
sential features of the new philosophy. 

373 



374 THE LARGER ASPECTS OF SOCIALISM 

The radicalism that followed the French Revolution, and 
the republican revolutions of 1848, produced not only new 
social theories, but also new philosophies, some of them 
astonishingly free from the prejudices of the science of 
the day. This is true to a large degree of several of the 
German social philosophers, but especially of Marx and 
Engels. For, in their general philosophy, fortunately, they 
were influenced even more by a revolutionary social the- 
ory (which has proved of lasting value) than by the 
physical natural science of their time or the theory of 
evolution just gaining possession of the world in the period 
in which they wrote. Though they imagined they were 
giving equal weight to these passing theories, it is for- 
tunate that their philosophical like their social conceptions 
were based, as a matter of fact, on studies of the history or 
evolution of man, and not on biological evolution. 

Engels has given a far more elaborate expression to 
the philosophical aspects of Socialism than has Marx, and 
his point of view is in most striking accord in many points 
with that of the present-day pragmatists. He taught that 
if one proceeds with scientific investigation from the evo- 
lutionary standpoint, then "a stop is put, once and for all, 
to the demand for final solutions and for eternal truths; 
one is firmly conscious of the necessary limitations of all 
acquired knowledge, of its hypothetical nature, owing to 
the circumstances under which it has been gained." 1 

But while Engels is opposed to those philosophies that 
demand final solutions and external truth he is equally 
opposed to those that deny the possibility of knowing such 
practical truths as are required for human purposes. 
Against the view of Hume and Kant, who "dispute the pos- 
sibility of a perception of the universe or at least of an 
exhaustive perception," Engels is in complete reaction : 

"The most destructive refutation of this as of all other 
fixed philosophic ideas is actual results, namely, experiment 
and industry. If we can prove the correctness of our idea 
of an actual occurrence by experiencing it ourselves and 
producing it from its constituent elements, and using it for 



APPENDIX A 375 

our own purposes, into the bargain, the Kantian phrase, 
'Ding an Sich' (thing in itself) ceases to have any mean- 
ing." 2 

"Before there was argumentation," says Engels else- 
where, "there was action. And human action had solved 
the difficulty long before human ingenuity invented it. 
The proof of the pudding is in the eating. From the 
moment we turn to our own use these objects, according 
to the qualities we perceive in them, we put to an infallible 
test the correctness or otherwise of our sense-perceptions. 
If these perceptions have been wrong, then our estimate of 
the use to which an object can be turned must also be 
wrong, and our attempt must fail. But if we succeed in 
accomplishing our aim, if we find that the object does 
agree with our idea of it, and does answer the purpose we 
intended it for, then that is positive proof that our per- 
ceptions of it and of its qualities, so far, agree with real" 
ity outside ourselves. And whenever we find ourselves 
face to face with a failure, then we generally are not long 
in making out the cause that made us fail ; we find that the 
perception upon which we acted was either incomplete and 
superficial, or combined with the results of other per- 
ceptions in a way not warranted by them- -what we call 
defective reasoning." 3 

And again, referring to Kant's celebrated unknowable 

"things-in-themselves," Engels says : 

"But one after another these ungraspable things have 
been grasped, analyzed, and, what is more, reproduced by 
the giant progress of science; and what we can produce, 
we certainly cannot consider as unknowable." 4 

Here we have the pragmatic and realistic view. It is, to 
be sure, only what the common sense of the majority of 
scientists says to-day, and has said for many years. But 
it is only recently, or in these early cases of Marx, Engels, 
Stirner and others, that such a standpoint has been elab- 
orated into a philosophy. And this philosophy is as much 
needed and as practically valuable as the vastly important 
concrete labors of science. 

Engels claims that the Marxian philosophy of history 



37^ THE LARGER ASPECTS OF SOCIALISM 

is in itself a philosophy of science and life. Whether this 
claim is entirely justified I have discussed elsewhere (see 
Chapter V). However, whether the Marxian philosophy of 
history has reached this goal or not, it has certainly pro- 
ceeded far in that direction. 

In his sketch of "Feuerbach," which is published with 
the suggestive sub-title "The Roots of the Socialist Philos- 
ophy," Engels not only gives his own views, but also some 
notes of Marx's, written in 1845. Feuerbach's being the 
leading materialist philosophy at the time, the notes of 
Marx concerning him give in the briefest possible way his 
(Marx's) general philosophical position, which is very 
similar to that of Engels : 

"The chief lack of all materialistic philosophy up to the 
present, including that of Feuerbach, is that the thing, the 
reality, sensation is only conceived of under the form of 
the object which is presented to the eye, but not as human 
sense — activity, 'praxis.' . . . Feuerbach is willing, it is 
true, to distinguish objects of sensation from objects exist- 
ing in thought, but he conceives of human activity itself as 
not being objective activity. He, therefore, in the 'Wesen 
des Christenthums,' regards only theoretical activity as gen- 
erally human, while the 'praxis' is conceived and fixed only 
in its disgusting form." 5 

The words italicized show Marx's reaction against ab- 
stract theory, even in its materialistic form, and his in- 
sistence on human activity as the basis and center of all 
philosophy, 

Engels expresses himself at greater length in the same 
volume : 

"As regards all philosophers, their system is doomed to 
perish and for this reason, because it emanates from an 
imperishable desire of the human soul, the desire to abol- 
ish all contradictions. But if all contradictions are once 
and for all disposed of, we have arrived at the so-called ab- 
solute truth, history is at an end, and yet it will continue 
to go on, although there is nothing further left for it to 
do — thus a newer and more insoluble contradiction. So 



APPENDIX A 2)77 

soon as we have once perceived — and to this perception no 
one has helped us more than Hegel himself — that the task 
thus imposed upon philosophy signifies that a single philos- 
opher is to accomplish what it is only possible for the en- 
tire human race to accomplish, in the course of its pro- 
gressive development — as soon as we understand that, it is 
all over with philosophy in the present sense of the word. 
In this way one discards the absolute truth, unattainable 
for the individual, and follozvs instead the relative truths 
attainable by way of the positive sciences/' (My italics.) 6 

Here the words italicized again show an exact parallel 
to Dewey's principle — that all philosophy must ceaselessly 
evolve, just as science does. 

Discussing Feuerbach as a typical materialist, Marx 
says: 

"Feuerbach does not see that religious feeling is itself 
a product of society, and that the abstract individual which 
he analyzes belongs in reality to a certain form of society. 

"The life of society is essentially practical. All the mys- 
teries which seduce speculative thought into mysticism find 
their solution in human practice and in concepts of this 
practice. 

"The highest point to which materialism attains, that is 
the materialism which comprehends sersation not as a 
practical fact, is the point of view. of the single individual 
in bourgeois society. 

"The standpoint of the old materialism is 'bourgeois' so- 
ciety; the standpoint of the new, human society, or asso- 
ciated humanity." 7 

Similarly, Engels sketch s the history of philosophy as 
being explicable only on an economic basis : 

"Parallel with the rise of the middle-class went on the 
great revival of science ; astronomy, mechanics, physics, 
anatomy, physiology, were again cultivated. And the bour- 
geoisie, for the development of its industrial production, re- 
quired a science which ascertained the physical properties of 
natural objects and the modes of action of the forces of 
Nature. Now up to then science had but been the humble 
handmaid of the Church, had not been allowed to over- 



37& THE LARGER ASPECTS OF SOCIALISM 

step the limits set by faith, and for that reason had been 
no science at all. Science rebelled against the Church; the 
bourgeoisie could not do without science, and, therefore, 
had to join in the rebellion." 8 

So much for the eighteenth century. Coming now to the 
nineteenth, Engels writes : 

"The materialism of the preceding century was over- 
whelmingly mechanical, because at that time, of all the 
natural sciences, mechanics, and indeed, only the me- 
chanics of the celestial and terrestrial fixed bodies, the 
mechanics of gravity in short, had reached any definite 
conclusions. Chemistry existed at first only in a childish, 
phlogistic form. Biology still lay in swaddling clothes; 
the organism of plants and animals was examined only in a 
very cursory manner, and was explained upon purely me- 
chanical grounds; just as an animal was to Descartes noth- 
ing but a machine, so was man to the materialists of the 
eighteenth century. The exclusive application of the meas- 
ure of mechanics to processes which are of chemical and 
organic nature and by which, it is true, the laws of 
mechanics are also manifested, but are pushed into the 
background by other higher laws, this application is the 
cause of the peculiar, but, considering the times, unavoid- 
able, narrowmindedness of the French materialism. 

"The second special limitation of this materialism lies 
in its incapacity to represent the universe as a process, as 
one form of matter assumed in the course of evolutionary 
development." (My italics.) 9 

The advent of biology to the center of the stage, and the 
theory of evolution, are the new scientific developments on 
which Engels laid emphasis. To-day, on the contrary, 
anthropology, psychology and sociology are the sciences 
which are most rapidly modifying our philosophic outlook. 

Marx's and Engels' "materialistic" conception of history 
is purely pragmatic. I have already indicated that the phi- 
losophy of these fathers of Socialist theory is by no means 
"materialistic" in ordinary sense. Marx wrote in 1845 : 

"The materialistic doctrine that men are the products of 
conditions and education, different men therefore the prod- 



APPENDIX A 379 

ucts of other conditions and changed education, forgets 
that circumstances may be altered by men and that the 
educator has himself to be educated. . . . The occurrence 
simultaneously of a change in conditions and human ac- 
tivity can only be comprehended and rationally understood 
as a revolutionary fact." 10 

And as late as 1890 Engels explained what he and Marx 
had meant by their materialist conception of social evolu- 
tion : 

"Marx and I are partly responsible for the fact that 
the younger men have sometimes laid more stress on the 
economic side than it deserves. In meeting the attacks of 
our opponents it was necessary for us to emphasize the 
dominant principle denied by them, and we did not always 
have the time, place, or opportunity to let the other factors 
which were concerned in the mutual action and reaction 
get their deserts." u 

The pragmatism of Marx and Engels, however, was 
much affected by their effort to adapt the Hegelian philos- 
ophy to Socialist purposes. Writing at the time they did 
and in Germany, it was almost inevitable that this should 
have been the case. While neither was in any sense a 
mere disciple of Hegel, both were in so far under his in- 
fluence that they were in reaction against him, and no man 
that ever lived was perhaps further from being a pragmat- 
ist than was Hegel. James denies the value not alone 
of Hegel's philosophy but also his very method of rea- 
soning, his "dialectics" which Marx and Engels were trying 
to adapt — recognizing at the same time the revolutionary 
and important role he played in the history of philosophy. 
Of the attitude of the typical Hegelian toward the mas- 
ter James writes : 

"What others feel as the intolerable ambiguity, verbosity, 
and unscrupulousness of the master's way of deducing 
things, he will probably ascribe — since divine oracles are 
notoriously hard to interpret — to the 'difficulty' that habit- 
ually accompanies profundity. For my own part, there 
seems something grotesque and saugrenu in the pretension 



380 THE LARGER ASPECTS OF SOCIALISM 

of a style so disobedient to the first rule of sound com- 
munication between minds to be the authentic mother- 
tongue of reason, and to keep step more accurately than 
any other style does with the Absolute's own ways of 
thinking. I do not therefore take Hegel's technical ap- 
paratus seriously at all. I regard him rather as one of 
those numerous original seers who can never learn how 
to articulate. His would-be coercive logic counts for noth- 
ing in my eyes; but that does not in the least impugn the 
philosophic importance of his conception of the Abso- 
lute if we take it merely hypothetically as one of the great 
types of cosmic vision." 12 

Neither do pragmatists deny that Hegel saw some things 
clearly. "What he really worked by," says James, "was 
his own empirical perceptions which exceeded and over- 
flowed his miserable, insufficient, and illogical categories in 
every instance of their use." Similarly in so far as the 
earliest Socialist writers followed Hegel in his antiquated 
process of reason, they may nevertheless have had their 
eyes all the time on this concrete reality that Hegel saw 
— so that it is possible that they themselves lost nothing 
by using his dialectical method. It is only we that must 
try to avoid misconception arising out of this obsolete 
phraseology and dialectics. Not many of us are likely to 
master Hegel's philosophy sufficiently to understand the 
early Socialist writers. But fortunately many of the lead- 
ing Socialists now alive have done so and have reproduced 
all the best of these old ideas in terms of the thought 
of our time, as, for instance, Kautsky, Mehring, and La 
Fargue. 

Engels explains what he really admired in Hegel's 
philosophy: "It once for all gave the coup de grace to 
finiteness of results of human thought and action." 

"Truth lay now in the process of knowledge itself, in 
the natural historical development of learning. ... In face 
of it nothing final, absolute or sacred exists, it assigns mor- 
tality indiscriminately, and nothing can exist before it 
save the unbroken process of coming into existence and 
passing away, the endless passing from the lower to the 



APPENDIX A 381 

higher, the mere reflection of which in the brain of the 
thinker it is itself." 13 

It is evident that Engels was attempting to use the He- 
gelian dialectic in a pragmatic manner, but the question is 
whether it is possible to do so. 

The only important truth we may allow in Hegel's 
philosophy is its relative advance over what went before, 
which is very well expressed by Engels : 

"As the bourgeoisie through large scale industry, com- 
petition, and the world market, destroyed the practical 
value of all stable and anciently honored institutions, so 
this dialectic philosophy destroyed all theories of absolute 
truth, and of an absolute state of humanity corresponding 
with them." 14 

But we cannot agree, from the point of view of our 
own generation, that, though Hegel reached "a very tame 
political conclusion," it was by means of a thoroughly revo- 
lutionary method of reasoning, nor that, while "the con- 
servatism of this philosophical view is relative, its revolu- 
tionary character [is] absolute." The Hegelian dialectic 
may have been revolutionary in 1840, It may be revolu- 
tionary to-day in the minds of those thinkers who insist on 
using it for purposes of revolutionary thought, but it does 
not play an important part in modern thinking, and a vast 
amount of cumbrous and doubtful interpretation would 
certainly be necessary even to make it acceptable. 

An illustration may be taken from the field of history, 
and it is here, indeed, that some of the most dogmatic and, 
in the light of present knowledge, some of the most crude 
of the Marx and Engels' parallels were drawn. It is not 
that we object to the thought that lay at the bottom of their 
minds, but the questions they put are now so antiquated, 
that either to accept their answers, or to reject them, 
would be equally valueless or misleading for the purpose 
of clear thinking. The historical illustration follows : 

"All civilized peoples began with common property in 
land. Among all peoples which pass beyond a certain prim- 



382 THE LARGER ASPECTS OF SOCIALISM 

itive stage the common property in land becomes a fet- 
ter upon production in the process of agricultural de- 
velopment. It is cast aside, negated, and, after shorter 
or longer intervening periods, is transformed into private 
property. But at a higher stage, through the develop- 
ment still further of agriculture, private property be- 
comes in its turn a bar to production, as is to-day the case 
with both large and small land proprietorship. The next 
step, to negate it in turn, to transform it into social prop- 
erty, necessarily follows. This advance however does not 
signify the restoration of the old primitive common prop- 
erty, but the establishment of a far higher, better developed 
form of communal proprietorship, which, far from being an 
impediment to production, rather, for the first time, is 
bound to put an end to its limitations and to give it the 
full benefit of modern discoveries in chemistry and me- 
chanical inventions." 15 

I shall leave it to the modern reader to add the numerous 
qualifications which are necessary to get any utility out of 
such a dogmatic formula as this. Another sociological 
illustration of dialectic reasoning given by Engels is quoted 
directly from Marx: 

" 'The capitalistic method of production and method of 
appropriation, that is to say capitalistic private property, 
is the first negation of individual private property founded 
on labor of individuals, the negation of capitalistic pro- 
duction will be self-produced with the necessity of a natu- 
ral process, etc' " 16 

Here we have, in fact, merely a continuation of the illus- 
tration previously quoted. 

The length to which Engels will go may be seen in the 
following statement giving us the "kernel of the dialectic 
view of nature" : 

"The view is reached under the compulsion of the mass 
of scientific facts, and one reaches it the more easily by 
bringing to the dialectic character of these facts a con- 
sciousness of the laws of dialectic thought. At all events, 
the scope of science is now so great that it no longer es- 
capes the dialectic comprehension." 17 



APPENDIX A 383 

It is certainly evident that modern thought is not fol- 
lowing this method, much as it may accord with the gen- 
eral conclusions of Engels' philosophy. 

In his "Feuerbach," Engels says that, during the fifteen 
years before he wrote (1886), "new material of knowl- 
edge was furnished in hitherto unheard of measure," and 
that "the fixing of inter-relations and therewith of order 
in the chaos of overwhelming discoveries was rendered 
possible quite lately for the first time." 18 This statement 
might be still more aptly applied to-day to almost every- 
thing that Marx, Engels, Darwin, Spencer, or Haeckel 
wrote. Certainly, the rate of scientific discoveries has been 
ten-fold, if not a hundred-fold more rapid in the last fif- 
teen years than in the period of Engels' writing. If the 
ordering of the sciences was not possible in Feuerbach's 
time, it was scarcely more possible, according to our 
present perspective, at the time of Engels — and, indeed, 
we have reached the conclusion that "the fixing" of inter- 
relations is something at which we do not want to aim 
at all. 

Indeed, Engels himself wrote that "the results of the 
investigation of nature need only be conceived of dia- 
lectically, that is in the sense of their mutual interconnec- 
tion, to arrive at a system of nature sufficient for our 
time!' 19 Here is an entirely satisfactory statement, and 
one that automatically relegates the methods Engels 
based on the science of his time into the background 
to-day. These conclusions were founded primarily 
on the great biological discoveries which were taking place 
in his day, and were centered mainly around the name 
of Darwin. As modern scientific psychology had not even 
appeared on the horizon, the whole field of psychology and 
logic was still left to the realm of metaphysics. It is at 
this historic juncture that Engels declared that "all belongs 
to the positive sciences of nature and history," except logic 
and the dialectic. These Engels proposed to build up on 
the basis of philosophy — which, all science having been 
subtracted, can mean only metaphysics. Thus restricted 



384 THE LARGER ASPECTS OF SOCIALISM 

by the knowledge of his time he deprived philosophy of 
science and science of philosophy. 

It is scarcely to the discredit of the Socialist movement, 
as the social embodiment of pragmatism, that its early think- 
ers were unable completely to formulate that philosophy in 
1850 or 1875. Not only did these thinkers definitely state 
that their philosophy was limited by the exigencies of the 
organization of the movement and its political and 
economic defence, as well as the science of their time, but 
the later Socialists show every indication of a growing ac- 
ceptance of the pragmatic spirit and method (which are 
the whole of pragmatism). Karl Kautsky, for example, in 
a recent number of the official weekly of the German party, 
of which he is editor, attacks certain dogmatic "Marxists" 
as follows : 

"They forget that a theory is an abstraction, not a com- 
pleted but a simplified picture of life. It is just through 
this simplification that the theory is able to bring sense and 
order into the chaos of phenomena and to find its position 
in this labyrinth. But it remains only an Ariadne's thread 
through the labyrinth. It never becomes the labyrinth 
itself, it never becomes identical with reality, but rather 
requires further and continual observation of it." 20 

As an illustration of this dogmatic tendency of many 
Marxists, Kautsky gives their narrow interpretation of the 
class struggle and proposes in its stead his own broader 
view, which is undoubtedly that of the Socialist movement 
as a whole. He explains that the purpose of his pamphlet 
on the class struggles of the French Revolution was to 
show not only the depth of the insight into history which 
can be gained from the application of the theory of the 
class struggle, but also the depth of the problems which 
grow out of the class struggle : 

"It [Kautsky's pamphlet] endeavored in this way to 
counteract not only the simplification of the theory of the 
class struggle but also that of its practice, by showing that 
Socialist politics can never satisfy itself by merely stating 
the class opposition between Capital and Labor, that it 



APPENDIX A 385 

must investigate the whole social organism in all its de- 
tails, since underneath this great opposition countless others 
exist in society, of less importance, but which cannot be 
overlooked, and the understanding and utilization of which 
may make proletarian tactics very much easier and more 
fruitful." 

Just as "the class struggle" is the central tenet of the 
political and economic movement, just as "the materialist 
conception of history" is the central tenet of its philosoph- 
ical aspect, so pragmatism is the method and the spirit of 
modern Socialist thought. 



APPENDIX B 
SOCIALISM AND RELIGION 

There is in evidence in Great Britain and America, and 
even in those countries of continental Europe where So- 
cialism has become a political factor of the first rank and 
needs only relatively small increase of votes to gain pos- 
session of government, a tendency among Socialist parties 
to try to get the leading Socialist writers and speakers to 
avoid public statements of the full implications of the So- 
cialist position. While it is perfectly true, as I pointed 
out in my "Socialism as It Is," that the organized Socialist 
movement of the present day is purely political and 
economic, this revolutionary political and economic move- 
ment cannot fail to have a profound effect on every 
other part of life. Could it possibly be a mere coinci- 
dence that in France and Germany, and in all coun- 
tries where Socialism is most highly developed, we find 
that, of all the anti-religious elements in the population, 
and they are very numerous, a very large part, often a ma- 
jority, are Socialists ; and, second, that of the membership 
of the Socialist Parties an overwhelming majority are 
either non-religious or anti-religious? 

As the non-religious and anti-religious elements of the 
population are far less numerous in Great Britain and 
America than on the continent of Europe, the ultra-prac- 
tical members of the Socialist Parties are, of course, ex- 
tremely nervous lest the real nature of Socialism in this 
matter may be disclosed. While such Socialists often 
argue that true religion necessarily leads to Socialism, they 
deny that the Socialist movement has anything to say 

386 



APPENDIX B 387 

about religion. And this would seem to be in entire ac- 
cord with the established position of the German Party 
and of the international movement generally, namely that 
"religion is a private matter." 

Stewart D. Headlam, for example, writes in his booklet, 
'The Socialist Church" : 

"Owing to the divorce of Socialism from the Church, 
there has grown up a tendency among some Socialists to 
exalt Socialism itself into a kind of religion and to main- 
tain that it contains in itself a reasoned theory and philos- 
ophy of life. It cannot be too emphatically stated that 
Socialism has but one end in view — the establishment of 
a righteous industrial and material condition." 

Of course I do not assert that Socialism provides a re- 
ligion, but it does seem to provide a substitute for re- 
ligion, and it does undoubtedly produce "a reasoned the- 
ory and philosophy of life." 

Indeed Socialism must provide a reasoned theory and 
philosophy of life or deny the proposition which has been 
the basis of all Socialist Party thought for nearly three- 
quarters of a century. The "materialist conception of his- 
tory" means nothing unless it means that each social class 
must develop a complete outlook on life. This is why 
Socialism claims to represent not only the political and 
economic attitude but also the thinking of the working class 
in so far as it affects this political and economic attitude. 
And this is why it believes also that a change in this 
economic basis must affect all civilization. 

The New Age claims that nothing human can be 
alien to Socialism : "It may be true that no one of the 
specific theories of religion or marriage so far put for- 
ward by Socialists has any claim to be called the Socialist 
view; but there is all the difference in the world between 
such an admission and the denial that Socialism has any 
concern with the question at all." * And a prominent mod- 
erate Socialist, Sidney Ball, one of the founders of the 
Fabian Society, expresses the view that Socialism means 



388 THE LARGER ASPECTS OF SOCIALISM 

"almost a revolution in the moral and religious attitude in 
the majority of mankind." 2 

The leading figures of the German and international 
movement were even more positive and outspoken. Engels 
said : "Beyond nature and man there exists nothing." 
Wilhelm Liebknecht wrote in Der Volkstaat: "It is our 
duty as Socialists to root out the faith in God with all our 
zeal, nor is one worthy of the name who does not conse- 
crate himself to the spread of atheism." 

In his pamphlet "Die Sozialdemokratie und die kath- 
olische Kirche," Kautsky has given reasons why an unre- 
flecting member of a Christian Church may be a good 
Socialist, and why a full understanding of Socialism is in- 
compatible with a full understanding of Christianity. The 
Socialist movement does not inquire into the faith of its ad- 
herents as long as they are good Socialists. The philosophy 
of the Socialist movement leads directly away from all re- 
ligion, but as religion, historically considered, has been one 
of the means by which the race has gradually struggled 
away from supernaturalism to a scientific habit of thought, 
it is impossible for Socialists to assume an inquisitorial or 
condemnatory attitude toward persons who still consider 
themselves to be religious — provided they are good So- 
cialists. 

"The antithesis between the Church and Social Democ- 
racy by no means signifies that a sincere Christian cannot 
at the same time be a Social Democrat. Christianity is the 
product of many factors; it has undergone many social 
changes and adapted itself to them, so that the notion of a 
'Christian' has become an exceedingly vague one, as also 
the notion of religion, which admits of various contradic- 
tory conceptions. . . . 

"One can, therefore, be a sincere Christian and never- 
theless feel the warmest sympathy for the class struggle of 
the proletariat. This holds still more true for those mil- 
lions who, like the masses, are members of a church 
merely as a matter of habit, without having reflected much 
on the matter. The organized movement of the struggling 
proletariat has not the slightest reason for keeping this 



APPENDIX B 389 

element aloof from them, provided the latter are able and 
willing to fight the class struggle in our way." 

The above was printed in the first edition of the pamph- 
let. Kautsky thereupon received a host of indignant let- 
ters from Socialists, protesting that the movement had 
always been anti-religious. He then stated the other side 
of the Socialist position in the preface of the second edi- 
tion, namely, that the progress of Socialism means the 
gradual elimination of religion: 

"As many letters addressed to me have shown that this 
sentence has been misunderstood, I do not think it out of 
place to remark that I do not view as possible the union 
of Christianity with Social Democracy as a political party 
in the sense that it is possible to arrive at a full understand- 
ing of Socialism from the standpoint of Christianity. . . . 

''Incompatible with scientific Socialism in particular is 
the idea of a God-Man or Superman who was empowered 
by force of his personality to redeem mankind or to bring 
it to a higher plane of existence. . . ." 

But Kautsky's most important conclusion is directed not 
merely against Christianity, but against all religions, that 
is all belief in God or immortality: 

"The acceptance of a personal God (and an impersonal 
God is a meaningless word) and of personal immortality is 
incompatible with the present stage of scientific knowl- 
edge in general, of which scientific Socialism is a part that 
cannot be severed from the whole." 

August Bebel is firmly convinced that Socialism "leads 
finally to atheism," and has the following to say (in his 
"Woman") on the future of religions : 

"As with the state, so it will be with religion. It will not 
be 'abolished,' God will not be 'dethroned,' people will 
not be 'robbed of their faith,' as all the foolish arguments 
are worded that are directed against atheistic Socialists. 
Such follies Socialists leave to bourgeois idealists who at- 
tempted such measures during the French Revolution and, 
of course, failed utterly. Without any forcible attack or 
expression of opinions, of whatever nature they may be, 



390 THE LARGER ASPECTS OF SOCIALISM 

the religious organizations will gradually disappear and 
the churches with them. . . . The ruling class, seeing its 
existence threatened, clings to religion, the support of all 
authority, as every ruling class has done. The bourgeoisie 
itself does not believe, and, by its entire development and 
by modern science that sprang from its lap, it has de- 
stroyed the faith in religion and in all authority. 

"Ignorance or hypocrisy in religious matters are nowhere 
greater than in the United States. The less the power of 
the state guides the masses by its organization, the more 
must it be done by religion, by the church. Therefore the 
bourgeoisie appears most pious wherever the power of the 
state is weakest. Besides the United States, this is the 
case in England, Belgium and Switzerland." 3 

In the New York Socialist organ, The Call, occurs the 
following editorial statement : 

"To be sure, scientific Socialism has certain aspects with 
which the church must of necessity disagree. On its 
purely religious side the church consists of a body of dog- 
mas, or articles of belief, which are in a necessary and un- 
avoidable conflict with the results, and even more so with 
the methods of all science. The church must, therefore, 
also assume an aspect of hostility toward the scientific as- 
pect of Socialism. But why single out Socialism for the 
attack? Why not attack at the same time the natural 
sciences ? Can it be that natural sciences are spared for 
the reason that they are indispensable to the existing social 
order, while Socialism as a science is assailed because it 
establishes the transitory nature and inevitable passing 
away of this social order ?" 4 

This is the only logical attitude even for the most "prac- 
tical" of Socialists to take. There is no doubt that So- 
cialism, like science, not only has a disintegrating effect on 
churches, but also on all forms of religion. I have spoken 
of the proportion of Socialists who are non-religious or 
anti-religious ; the proportion among scientists is perhaps 
even greater. 

The fact that the Socialist Party does not as a rule make 
it part of its official position to attack religion begs the 



APPENDIX B 391 

question. It is true that Socialist parties all declare that 
religion is a private matter. They mean by this only that 
religion is not a matter for interference on the part of their 
organizations. They do not at all mean that religion has 
no public aspects, that religion is not a public question. 
Otherwise nearly all the leading Socialists would have been 
expelled from the movement for discussing religion as a 
matter of public importance and especially so to Socialists. 
The Socialist Party of Vermont, in its convention of 
1912, made this official declaration : 

"When we say that religion is 'a private matter' we do 
not mean that it has no social significance. Such a con- 
tention would be manifestly absurd. Religion is insep- 
arable from conduct, from human relations, and hence it is 
a social force of the greatest importance. What is meant 
by the declaration is that religious belief or non-belief 
is a matter for the individual conscience with which the 
State, or political parties within the State, can have noth- 
ing to do." 

This statement only needs to be supplemented by saying 
that not only does religion have a social significance, but 
also that every movement which has a social significance 
must have a profound effect on religion. 

We may slightly paraphrase Bebel's statement above 
given and say that the majority of Socialists are firmly con- 
vinced that Socialism and modern science must finally lead 
to a state of society where there will be no room whatever 
for religion in any form. Bebel is certainly correct when 
he denies that the Socialists will make any violent onslaught 
on religion, even in its crudest form, as long as it remains, 
as it does in some Protestant churches, practically a mat- 
ter of the individual conscience, and not an organized doc- 
trine. But he equally represents the views of the over- 
whelming majority of Socialists in all countries where So- 
cialism has become an important factor in society, when 
he expresses the belief that all that we know by the name 
of religion is likely to disappear without any violent at- 
tack, and when he works to hasten that day. 



NOTES 

INTRODUCTION— SOCIALISM A NEW CIVILIZATION 

1. Anton Menger, L'Etat Socialiste, p. 360. 

2. Jean Jaures, Histoire Socialiste, Vol. I, p. 6. 

3. H. G. Wells, New Worlds for Old, pp. 344-346. 

4. Walt Whitman, Prose Works (1892), p. 205. 

5. The New Review, January 25, 1913. 

6. H. G. Wells, op. cit., p. 348. 

CHAPTER I 
PRAGMATISM AS A SOCIALIST PHILOSOPHY 

1. Present Philosophical Tendencies, pp. 197-200, 268. 

2. John Dewey, Influence of Darwin on Philosophy, 
p. 298. 

3. Ibid., p. 59. 

4. John A. Hobson, The Crisis of Liberalism, p. 272. 

5. William James, Some Problems of Philosophy, p. 
60. 

6. Ibid., pp. 95-97. 

7. Ibid., p. 108. 

8. Ibid., pp. 221, 222. 

9. Ibid., p. 223. 

10. William James, Essays in Radical Empiricism, pp. 
261, 265. 

11. Ibid., pp. 172, 173. 

12. R. B. Perry, Present Philosophical Tendencies, pp. 
200-226. 

13. William James, Pragmatism, p. 201, 

14. Perry, op. cit., p. 210. 

15. Dewey, op. cit, p. 95 (note). 

392 






notes 393 

16. Perry, op. cit., pp. 212, 213. 

17. William James, The Meaning of Truth, pp. xix, 195. 

18. John Dewey, How We Think, p. 27. 

19. Ibid., p. 79. 

20. Ibid., p. 96. 

21. Ibid., p. 21. 

22. Ibid., p. 142. 

23. /&«/., p. 154. 

24. Ibid., p. 156. 

25. The Bearings of Pragmatism on Education, Pro- 
gressive Journal of Education, January, 1909. 

26. Dewey and Tufts, Ethics, p. 334. 

27. Ibid., p. 335. 

28. The Influence of Darwin on Philosophy, p. 157. 

29. Ibid., p. 19. 

30. Ibid., p. 68. 

31. Ibid., p. 49. 

32. Ibid., p. 48. 

33. Ibid., p. 55. 

34. Ibid., p. 65. 

35. Ibid., p. 66. 

36. Henri Bergson, L'Evolution Creatrice, p. viii. 

37. The Influence of Darwin on Philosophy, p. 73. 

38. Ibid., p. 75. 



CHAPTER II 
THE APPEAL TO SCIENCE 



John A. Hobson, The Crisis of Liberalism, p. 265. 

Herbert Spencer, Man vs. The State, pp. 57, 66. 

Herbert Spencer, Study of Sociology, p. 157. 

Darwin's Influence on Philosophy, p. J2. 

John Dewey, Psychology and Social Practice. 

John Stuart Mill, Logic, p. 562. 

Lester F. Ward, Applied Sociology, p. 307. 



394 THE LARGER ASPECTS OF SOCIALISM 

8. Ibid., p. 83. 

9. Nietzsche, The Twilight of the Idols, p. 157. 

10. Nietzsche, Thoughts Out of Season, Part II, p. 136. 

n. Nietzsche, Thoughts Out of Season, Part II, pp. 23, 
in. 

12. Nietzsche, A Genealogy of Morals, pp. 203, 207. 

13. Ibid., p. 212. 

CHAPTER III 
" EVOLUTION " 

i. Mrs. Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Human Work, pp. 

188, 215. 

2. Max Nordau, The Interpretation of History, p. 43. 

3. John A. Hobson, op. cit, pp. 263, 266. 

4. Herbert Spencer, Principles of Sociology, Vol. 1, 

p- 587- 

5. Henry George, Progress and Poverty, pp. 477-479. 

6. Ibid., 522, 523. 

7. Max Stirner, Der Einzige und Sein Eigentum, 
(Reklam), p. 416. 

8. Darwin and Modern Science, p. 457. 

9. Mrs. Gilman, op. cit., 167. 



CHAPTER IV 
THE REIGN OF BIOLOGY 



I 

185 

2 

3 
4 

5 



John A. Hobson, The Crisis of Liberalism, pp. 184, 

J. R. MacDonald, Socialism and Society, p. 33. 

H. G. Wells, First and Last Things, pp. 93, 94, IOI. 

Ibid., 102, in, 133. 

Darwin and Modern Science, p. 457. 



NOTES 



395 



CHAPTER V 
THE ABUSE OF HISTORY 

1. Ostwald, Die Wissenschaft. 

2. Darwin and Modern Science, pp. 531-539. 

3. William Godwin, History of the Commonwealth, p. 
ix (London, 1829). 

4. Nordau, op. cit, p. 41. 

5. J. H. Robinson, The New History, p. 266. 

6. Nordau, op. cit., p. 45. 

7. Ibid., p. 56. 

8. John Dewey, Moral Principles in Education, p. 36. 

9. Robinson, op. cit., p. 150. 

10. Die Neue Zeit, August 25, 191 1. 

11. Die Neue Zeit, December 20, 1912. 

12. Friedrich Nietzsche, Thoughts Out of Season, Part 

n, p. 55. 

13. Ibid., Part II., p. 54. 
Ibid., 



14. 
15- 
16. 

17- 
18. 
19. 
20. 
21. 
22. 

23- 

24. 

25. 
26. 
27. 
28. 



Ibid., 
Ibid., 
Ibid., 
Ibid., 
Ibid., 
Ibid., 
Ibid., 
Ibid., 
Ibid., 
Ibid., 
Ibid., 
Ibid., 
Ibid., 
Ibid., 



P. 53 

p. 27 

p. 15 

p. 28 

P- 3i 

PP- 3 

p. 71 

p. 76 



83 
84 
9i 

34 



1-32. 



pp. 40, 65. 

p. 6S. 

pp. 48, 49. 



396 THE LARGER ASPECTS OF SOCIALISM 

CHAPTER VI 
SOCIETY AS GOD 

1. Herbert Spencer, Study of Sociology, pp. 9, 10. 

2. Nordau, op. cit., pp. 108 ff. 

3. Jean Jaures, op. cit, Vol. II, p. 841. 

4. J. R. MacDonald, Socialism and Government, p. 7. 

5. Ibid., po 11. 

6. Ibid., p. 10. 

7. Ibid., p. 17. 

8. J. R. MacDonald, Socialism and Society, p. 12 note. 

9. Ibid., p. 12. 

10. Socialism and Government, pp. 82, 83, 109. 

11. John A. Hobson, op. cit., pp. 76-81. 

12. Friedrich Nietzsche, Also Sprach Zarathustra. 

13. Sherger, The Evolution of Modern Liberty, p. 253. 

14. Herbert Spencer, Principles of Sociology, Vol. I, 

p. 587. 

15. Herbert Spencer, Social Statics, p. 352. 

16. Ibid., p. 329. 

17. Principles of Sociology, Vol. Ill, pp. 587-589. 

18. Herbert Spencer, Essays, Vol. II, p. 462. 

19. Study of Sociology, p. 100. 

20. Essays, Vol. II, p. 170. 

21. Herbert Spencer, Social Statics, p. 297. 

22. Essays, Vol. Ill, pp. 294, 295. 

23. Social Statics, p. 407. 

24. C. N. Cooley, Social Organization, p. 274. 

CHAPTER VII 

THE INDIVIDUAL AND THE NEW SOCIETY— AS SEEN 
BY STIRNER 

I. All the quotations from this chapter are taken from 
Stirner's "Der Einsige und Sein Eigentum." 



notes 397 

CHAPTER VIII 
SOCIALISM AND MORALITY 

1. Franz Boas, The Mind of Primitive Man, p. 192. 

2. Karl Kautsky, Ethics (Chas. H. Kerr), p. 192. 

3. Ibid., p. 193. 

4. Ibid., p. 198. 

5. Ibid., p. 101. 

6. J. R. MacDonald, Socialism and Government, Vol. I, 
p. 10. 

7. Ibid., Vol. I, p. 11. 

8. Dewey and Tufts, Ethics, p. 369. 

9. Ibid., p. 521. 

10. Maeterlinck, The Double Garden, pp. 109, in. 

ii. H. G. Wells, First and Last Things, p. 53. 

12. Dewey and Tufts, op. cit, p. 448. 

13. William James, Talks to Teachers, p. 194. 

14. Grote, History of Greece, Vols. VIII and IX. 

15. Oscar Wilde's Essay, the Soul of Man Under So- 
cialism. 

16. Mrs. Gilman, op. cit., p. 143. 

17. Dewey's Essay on Ethics, pp. 20, 21. 

18. Dewey's Moral Principles in Education, pp. 42, 43. 

19. Dewey's Essay on Ethics, p. 8. 

20. H. G. Wells, First and Last Things, pp. 149, 151. 



CHAPTER IX 

NIETZSCHE AND THE NEW MORALITY 



1. Beyond Good and Evil, Sec. 3. 

2. Beyond Good and Evil, Sec. 4. 

3. Beyond Good and Evil, Sec. 5. 

4. Twilight of the Idols, Sec. 2. 



398 THE LARGER ASPECTS OF SOCIALISM 

5. Genealogy of Morals, Sec. 24. 

6. Beyond Good and Evil, Sec. 63. 

7. Joyful Wisdom, Sec. 2. 

8. Joyful Wisdom, Sec. 307. 

9. The Dawn of Day, Sec. 44. 

10. The Dawn of Day, Sec. 547. 

11. Joyful Wisdom, Sec. 354. 

12. Joyful Wisdom, Sec. 354. 
x 3- Joyful Wisdom, Sec. 355. 

14. Twilight of the Idols, Sees. 10 and 11. 

15. The Dawn of Day, Sec. 125. 

16. Thoughts Out of Season, Vol. II, p. 107. 
I 7- Joyful Wisdom, Sec. 3. 

18. Joyful Wisdom, Sec. in. 

19. Joyful Wisdom, Sec. 11. 

20. Joyful Wisdom, Sec. 349. 

21. Twilight of the Idols, Sec. 14. 

22. Genealogy of Morals, Sec. 12. 

23. The Antichrist, Sec. 57. 

24. Joyful Wisdom, Sec. 21. 

25. The Dawn of Day, Sec. 105. 

26. The Dawn of Day, Sec. 9. 

27. Joyful Wisdom, Sec. 117. 

28. The Antichrist, Sec. 1. 

29. Zarathustra, Old and New Tables, Sec. 5. 

30. Genealogy of Morals, Sec. 27. 

31. Joyful Wisdom, Sec. 338. 

32. Joyful Wisdom, Sec. 338. 

33. The Dawn of Day, Sec. 134. 

34. Zarathustra, New and Old Tables, Sees. 4 and 5. 

35. The Dawn of Day, Sec. 146. 

36. The Dawn of Day, Sec. 145. 

37. Joyful Wisdom, Sec. 99. 

38. Twilight of the Idols, Sec. 35. 

39. Beyond Good and Evil, Sec. 259. 

40. Genealogy of Morals, Sec. 6. 

41. Genealogy of Morals, Second Essay, Sec. 2. 

42. The Dawn of Day, Sec. 103. 



notes 399 

43. The Dawn of Day, Sec. 174. 

44. Beyond Good and Evil, Sec. 57. 

45. Joyful Wisdom, Sec. 107. 

46. Beyond Good and Evil, Sec. 32. 

47. Beyond Good and Evil, Sec. yj, 

48. The Dawn of Day, Sec. 97. 

49. The Twilight of the Idols, Sec. 33. 

50. The Dawn of Day, Sec. 164. 

51. The Twilight of the Idols, Sec. 32. 

52. The Twilight of the Idols, Sec. 6. 

53. Beyond Good and Evil, Sec. 41. 

54. Joyful Wisdom, Sec. 370. 

55. Genealogy of Morals, Third Essay, Sec. 28. 

56. The Antichrist, Sec. 2. 



CHAPTER X 
THE SOCIALIST EXPLANATION OF RELIGION 

1. Jane Ellen Harrison, Essay on "The Influence of 
Darwinism on the Study of Religions" in the volume, Dar- 
win and Modern Science. 

2. Ibid. 

3. Ibid. 

4. Ibid. 

5. Levy-Bruhl, Les Fonctions Mentales des Societes In- 
ferieures. 

6. Irving King, The Development of Religion, p. 329. 

7. Ibid., p. 340. 

8. The American Magazine, October, 1909. 

9. Harrison, op. cit. 

10. Ibid. 

11. Ibid. 

12. Ostwald, op. cit. 

13. Hubert et Mauss, Melanges d'Histoire des Re- 
ligions, p. 41. 

14. Ibid., p. 29. 



400 THE LARGER ASPECTS OF SOCIALISM 

15. Hubert et Mauss, Melanges d'Histoire des Re- 
ligions, p. 32. 

16. Ibid., p. 37. 

17. King, op. cit., p. 89. 

18. Emerson's Essay on The Over-Soul. 

19. Human Work, p. 146. 

20. The Conservator, Vol. XXIII, p. 108. 

21. Herbert Spencer, First Principles. 

22. Professor Lighter Witmer in The Psychological 
Clinic. 

23. Dr. Henry R. Marshall in The Hibbert Journal. 

CHAPTER XI 
THE NEW EDUCATION 

1. Heinrich Schulz, "Die Schulreform der Sozialdem- 
okratie." 

2. Ibid., pp. 18-20. 

3. Ibid., p. 96. 

4. Ibid., pp. 97-100. 

5. Ibid., pp. 63-66. 

6. John Dewey, How We Think, p. 25. 

7. John Dewey, Moral Principles in Education, pp. 
10, 17. 

8. John Dewey, Hibbert Journal, 1907. 

9. Psychology and Social Practice (pamphlet). 

10. Ibid. 

11. Ibid. 

12. Ibid. 

13. Ibid. 

14. Ibid. 

15. Ibid. 

16. "The Bearings of Pragmatism Upon Education." 

17. Progressive Journal of Education, February, 1909. 

18. Ibid., February, 1909. 

19. Ibid., January, 1909. 

20. Ibid. 



NOTES 40I 



21. 


Progressive Journal of Education, October 15, 1909. 


22. 


Moral Principles in Education, p. 22, 


23. 


Ibid., p. 23. 


24. 


Ibid., p. 24. 


25. 


How We Think, p. 165. 


26. 


Ibid., p. 176. 


27. 


Ibid., p. 177. 


28. 


Boris Sidis, Philistine and Genius, pp. 58, 60. 


29. 


Ibid, p. 91. 


30- 


Ibid, p. 40. 


3i- 


Stanley Hall, Educational Problems, p. 479. • 



32. Ibid., pp. 478, 483. 

CHAPTER XII 
SOCIALISM AND THE NEW EDUCATION 

1. Stirner, The Ego and His Own. 

2. Tolstoy, "On Popular Education," 1862. 

3. do. "On Popular Education," 1862. 

4. do. "On Popular Education," 1875. 

5. do. "On Popular Education," 1862. 

6. do. "On Popular Education," 1875. 

7. do. Thoughts on Education and Instruction, 
1899-1901. 

8. Monroe, Text Book on the History of Education, p. 
719. 

9. Ibid., p. 720. 

10. Charles W. Eliot, More Money for the Public 
Schools (booklet). 

11. The School Review, April, 1909. 

12. The Youth's Companion, January 6, 1910. 

13. Carlton, Education and Industrial Evolution, p. 303. 

14. Ibid., p. 309. 

15. Socialism As It Is, pp. 99-106. 

16. Berliner Vorwaerts, March 17, 191 2. 



402 THE LARGER ASPECTS OF SOCIALISM 

CHAPTER XIII 
MAN, WOMAN, AND SOCIALISM 

1. August Bebel, "Woman," translated by Meta L. 
Stern, p. 98. 

2. Ibid., p. 469. 

3. Ellen Key, Love and Marriage, pp. 24, 253. 

4. Ibid., p. 30. 21. Ibid., p. 92. 

5. Ibid., p. 184. 22. Ibid., p. 87. 

6. Ibid., p. 326. 23. Ibid., p. 122. 

7. Ibid., p. 360. 24. Ibid., p. 41. 

8. Ibid., p. 55. 25. Ibid., p. 22. 

9. Ibid., p. 201. 26. Ibid., p. 21. 

10. Ibid., p. 241. 2y. Ibid., p. 47. 

11. Ibid., p. 300. 28. Ibid., p. 23. 

12. Ibid., p. 355. 29. Ibid., p. 16. 

13. /Wd., p. 396. 30. Ibid., p. 39. 

14. Ibid., p. 32. 31. Ibid., p. 191. 

15. Ibid., p. 35. 32. JWrf., pp. 311-319. 

16. Ibid., p. 346. 33. Ibid., p. 34. 

17. Ibid., p. 398. 34. Ibid., p. 29. 

18. /fo'd., p. 98. 35. Ibid., p. 201. 

19. Ibid., p. 84. 36. Ibid., p. 202. 

20. Ibid., p. 102. 37. JTfctd., p. 203* 

38. Olive Schreiner, Woman and Labor, p. 216. 

39. Ellen Key, op. cit, p. 228. 

40. Ibid., pp. 37 I "373- 

41. Ibid., p. 259. 

42. Olive Schreiner, op. cit., p. 2*j. 

43. Ibid., p. 98. 

44. Ibid., p. 115. 

45. Ibid., pp. 79-81. 

46. Charlotte Perkins Gilman, The Man-Made World, 
p. 187. 

47. Ibid., p. 191. 

48. Ibid., p. 206. 

49. The Montessori Method, pp. 63-66, 



NOTES 403 

APPENDIX A 
PRAGMATISM AND SOCIALISM 

1. Frederich Engels, Feuerbach (Chicago, 1908), p. 97. 

2. Ibid., p. 60. 

3. Frederich Engels, Socialism Utopian and Scientific 
(Chicago, 1910), p. 19. 

4. Ibid., p. 21. 

5. Feuerbach, p. 129. 

6. Ibid., p. 48. 

7. Ibid., p. 132. 

8. Socialism Utopian and Scientific, p. 24. 

9. Feuerbach, p. 65. 

10. Ibid., p. 130. 

11. Ibid., p. 25. 

12. William James, A Puralistic Universe, Essay on 
Hegel. 

13. Feuerbach, p. 43. 

14. Ibid., p. 42. 

15. Frederich Engels, Landmarks of Scientific Social- 
ism, p. 169. 

16. Ibid., p. 164. 

17. Ibid., p. 34. 

18. Feuerbach, p. 69. 

19. Ibid., p. 101. 

20. Die Neue Zeit (Stuttgart), August 12, 1912. 

APPENDIX B 
SOCIALISM AND RELIGION 

1. The New Age, October 10, 1907. 

2. Sidney Ball, The Moral Aspects of Socialism, p. 23. 

3. August Bebel, op. cit, pp. 437"439> 447. 44& 

4. The New York Call, January 5, 1910. 



INDEX 



Aristotle, 20, 21. 

Bacon, Francis, 35. 

Ball, Sidney, 387. 

Balzac, 214. 

Barlow, Joel, 122. 

Bancroft, 95. 

Bebel, August, 257, 296, 321, 325, 

390. 
Bergson, Henri, XVIII, 3, 7, 23, 

24, 25, 5i, 53- 
Bernstein, Edward, XVIII. 
Boas, Franz, 71, 80, 162, 163. 
Bonsor, Frederick G., 282, 285. 
Brisbane, Arthur, 64. 
Bryan, W. J., 54. 
Burke, Edwin, 63, 122. 
Bury, J. B., 89, 90. 

Carlton, Frank T., 312-314. 
Carlyle, Thomas, 40. 
Carnegie, Andrew, 63, 64. 
Canalejas, Premier, VII. 
Christ, 170, 182, 185, 248, 250. 
Comte, Auguste, 112, 114. 
Cooley, C. N., 136, 137. 
Cotton, 123. 
Cunow, Heinrich, 97. 

Darwin, Charles, 27, 81-84. 
Dewey, John; On Pragmatism, 

IV, 3-6, 9-27, 34-40; 

On Evolution, 531 ; 

On Morality, 169,170,185-188; 

On Education, 263-286. 

Eliot, Charles W., 250, 296, 297, 

309- 
Emerson, Ralph Waldo, 105, 250. 
Engels, Friedrich, 27, 98, 369, 

373-385, 388. 



Fabian Society, The, XVIII. 
Ferrer, Francis, 267, 304-306. 



France, Anatole, 191. 
Frazer, J. G., 57, 58. 

George, Henry, 68-70. 

Gilman, Mrs. Charlotte Perkins: 

On Evolution, 50-52, 56; 

On Morality, 185; 

On Religion, 251 ; 

On Woman, 325, 326, 354, 365- 

369. 
Godwin, William, 91, 92, 115. 
Gorki, Maxim, 191. 

Hadley, Arthur T., 310, 311. 
Haeckel, Ernst, 24, 31, 33, 238, 

239, 252, 253. 
Hall, G. Stanley, 293, 294, 311, 

3.12, 339. 
Harrison, Jane Ellen, 230-232, 

234, 238-242. 
Headlam, Stewart D., 387. 
Hegel, 2, 3, 22, 23, 32. 
Hobson, John A., VIII, 5, 33, 34, 

65, 73, 120, 121. 
Hoffding, 84. 
Hubert, H., 245-247. 
Huxley, 118. 

Ibsen, Heinrich, 192. 

James, William : 

On Pragmatism, 3, 6-18, 27; 

On Morality, 174-178; 

On Religion, 235-237, 244, 245, 
254-256. 
Jaures, Jean, VI, XVIII. 

Kant, 2, 22, 23, 176, 177, 183, 184, 

189, 225, 227. 
Kautsky, Karl: 

On Pragmatism, 31, 32, 384, 

385; 
On History, 96-109; 
On Morality, 164-166, 168; 
On Religion, 388, 389. 



405 



406 



INDEX 



Key, Ellen, 325~337, 343-359- 
King, Irving, 233-235, 244, 247, 
248. 

Levy-Bruhl, 233-235. 
Liebknecht, Wilhelm, XII, 388. 
Lloyd-George, David, 64. 

MacDonald, J. R., 75, 76, 117- 

120, 168, 169. 
Mach, 114. 
Maeterlinck, Maurice, 171, 172, 

191, 250. 
Marx, Karl: 
On Socialism, XIX, XXIII; 
On Pragmatism, 27, 32, 373- 

385; 
On History, 96, 97, 102; 
On Morality, 161; 
On Religion, 228. 
Mauss, M., 245-247. 
Menger, Anton, VII. 
Mill, John Stuart, 38, 42, 43, 

167. 
Monroe, Paul, 307-308. 
Montessori, Maria, 258-264, 369, 

370. 
Morley, John, XXII, 62, 115. 
Morris, William, 191. 

Napoleon, 161, 193. 
New Age, The, 387. 
New York Call, The, 390. 
Nietzsche, Friedrich : 

On Science, 44-46; 

On History, 103-1 1 1 ; 

On Society, 122; 

On Morality, 189, 191-227. 
Nordau, Max, 53, 93, 94, 114. 

Ostwald, Wilhelm, 41, 42, 88, 243. 

Pannekoek, Anton, XVI. 

Pascal, 114. 

Paul, Saint, 178, 249. 

Plato, 20, 21, 178, 179, 180, 181, 

255- 
Perry, R. B., 2, 4, 10, 11, 12, 13. 

Ranke, 95. 

Revisionists, The, XIX. 
Robinson, J. H., 94, 96. 



Roosevelt, Theodore, 63. 
Rousseau, J. J., 117, 122. 
Ruskin, John, 40. 

Schelling, 95. 

Schiller, F. C. S, 6, 13. 

Schopenhauer, 225. 

Schreiner, Olive, 326, 354, 359- 

365. 
Schulz, Heinrich, Die Schul- 

reform der Sozialdemokratie. 

Sidis, Boris, 286-291. 

Simmel, 114. 

"Socialism as It Is," II, XII, 315. 

Socrates, 179, 180, i8i ? 202. 

Spencer, Herbert: 

On Pragmatism, 2, 24, 27, 31- 
38; 

On Evolution, 48, 49, 52, 59- 
61, 66-68; 

On Biology, 85, 86; 

On Sociology, 112-116, 124- 
135; 

On Morality, 178; 

On Religion, 231, 254. 
Stirner, Max: 

On Evolution, 72; 

On History, in ; 

On the Individual in the New 
Society, 172-183; 

On Education, 298. 
Syndicalists, The, XIX. 

Thomson, J. Arthur, 76. 
Tolstoy, Leo, 40, 46, 192, 298-304. 
Traubel, Horace, 252. 
Tufts, James H., 17, 169, 170, 173, 
185. 

Vorwaerts (Berlin), 317, 318. 

Wallace, Alfred Russell, 253. 

Wallis, Louis, 248, 249. 

Ward, Lester F., 43, 44, 56, 68, 

137, 138, 307- 
Wells, H. G., VII, XIII, XX, 56, 

77, 78, 172, 176, 189. 
Westermarck, 162, 163. 
Whitman, Walt, IX. 
Wilde, Oscar, 184, 185. 



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